He read again the letter Reuben had written.  “My daughter is very young, but we lean upon her as if she was older.  She has helped us bear all our misfortunes, and we have more confidence in her opinions than in our own about everything.”  The Elder was displeased.

“Lean on her;’ I should think you did!  Poor little girl!  Well, I can look out for her; that’s one comfort.”  And the Elder wrote a short note to the effect that he would meet their “child” at the railway station, which was six miles from their town; that he would do all he could to help her; and that he hoped soon to see Mr. and Mrs. Miller under his roof.

The words of the note were most friendly, but there was an indefinable difference between it and all the others, which Draxy felt without knowing that she felt it, and her last words to her father as she bade him good-by from the car window were:  “I don’t feel so sure as I did about our staying with Mr. Kinney, father.  You leave it all to me, do you, dear, even if I decide to buy a house?”

“Yes, daughter,” said Reuben, heartily; “all!  Nothing but good’s ever come yet of your way o’ doin’ things.”

“An’ I don’t in the least hanker after that Injun,” he called out as the cars began to move.  Draxy laughed merrily.  Reuben was a new man already.  They were very gay together, and felt wonderfully little fear for people to whom life had been thus far so hard.

There was not a misgiving in Draxy’s heart as she set out again on a two days’ journey to an unknown place.  “Oh how different from the day when I started before,” she thought as she looked out on the water sparkling under the bright May sun.  She spent the first night, as before, at the house of Captain Melville’s brother, and set out at eight the following morning, to ride for ten hours steadily northward.  The day was like a day of June.  The spring was opening early; already fruit-trees were white and pink; banks were green, and birds were noisy.

By noon mountains came in sight.  Draxy was spellbound.  “They are grander than the sea,” thought she, “and I never dreamed it; and they are loving, too.  I should like to rest my cheek on them.”

As she drew nearer and nearer, and saw some tops still white with snow, her heart beat faster, and with a sudden pang almost of conscience-stricken remorse, she exclaimed, “Oh, I shall never, never once miss the sea!”

Elder Kinney had borrowed Eben Hill’s horse and wagon to drive over for Draxy.  He was at the station half an hour before the train was due.  It had been years since the steady currents of his life had been so disturbed and hurried as they were by this little girl.

“Looks like rain, Elder; I ’spect she’ll have to go over with me arter all,” said George Thayer, the handsomest, best-natured stage-driver in the whole State of New Hampshire.  The Elder glanced anxiously at the sky.

“No, I guess not, George,” he replied. “’Twon’t be anything more’n a shower, an’ I’ve got an umbrella and a buffalo-robe.  I can keep her dry.”