he lifted me up in his arms and kissed me, as if I were a little child
instead of a maiden just fifteen. This he had never done before, and
it made me a little frightened. He saw it, and spoke on the spur of the
thought, though still with one arm round me.

"Perhaps you will live to be thankful, my dear, that you had a stern,
cold father. So will you meet the world all the better; and, little one,
you have a rough world to meet."

For a moment I was quite at a loss to account for my father's manner;
but now, in looking back, it is so easy to see into things. At the time
I must have been surprised, and full of puzzled eagerness.

Not half so well can I recall the weakness, anguish, and exhaustion of
body and spirit afterward. It may have been three days of wandering, or
it may have been a week, or even more than that, for all that I can say
for certain. Whether the time were long or short, it seemed as if it
would never end. My father believed that he knew the way to the house
of an old settler, at the western foot of the mountains, who had treated
him kindly some years before, and with whom he meant to leave me until
he had made arrangements elsewhere. If we had only gone straightway
thither, night-fall would have found us safe beneath that hospitable
roof.

My father was vexed, as I well remember, at coming, as he thought, in
sight of some great landmark, and finding not a trace of it. Although
his will was so very strong, his temper was good about little things,
and he never began to abuse all the world because he had made a mistake
himself.