My husband an Indian!  I looked at him anew.  He wore the same presence that he did when first I saw him, a twelve-month before.  There was no outward trace of the savage, as he came to welcome me; and I forgot my thought presently, as I listened to his words.

“I am tired of this life,” he said; “let us go.”

“Where, Saul?”

“Anywhere, where we can breathe.  I feel pent up here.  I long to hunt something wild and free as I would be.  Shall it be to the prairies, Lucy?”

“Will you live on the hunt?” I asked.

“I had not thought of that.  No; I’ll build you a”——­And he paused.

I laughed, and added,—­

“Let us have it, Saul.  A wigwam?”

“Why not?”

“Why not, indeed, Saul?  I am content,—­let us go.”

On the morrow I began the work of preparation.  I was sitting upon the carpet, where I had cast all our treasures of knowledge, in the various guises of the printer’s and binder’s art, and was selecting the books that I fondly thought would be essential to my existence, when Saul came in.

He looked down upon me with that look that always drinks up my sight into his, and said,—­

“You are sorry to go, Lucy.  I will stay.”

“No, Saul, I wish to go.  You shall teach me the pleasures of wild life; and who knows but I shall like it so well that we will give up civilization for it?  Where shall I pack all these books?”

“Leave them all,” he said.  “We will close the house as it is, until we come back.”  And I left them all at home.

In the heart of these preparations an insane desire came into my mind to know something of Saul’s ancestors, and there was but one way to know, namely, by asking, which I would not do of human soul.  Thus it came to pass that I was driven out, between this would of my mind and wouldn’t of my soul, to search for some knowledge from inanimate things.  The last night before our departure I became particularly restless and unsatisfied.  I went to the place of burial of the villagers, where I found duly recorded on two stones the names of Saul’s parents, Richard Monten and Agnes Monten, his wife.

There was nothing Indian there, and I went home once more to the place that had been so happy until the spirit of inquiry grew stronger than I. That night I watched Saul, until he grew restless, and asked me why I did so.

I evaded direct reply, and on the morrow we were wheeling westward.

From the instant we left the line of man’s art, Saul became another person.  All the romance and the glory in his nature blossomed out gorgeously, and I grew glad and gay with him.  We crossed the Missouri.  We traversed the river-land to Fort Leavenworth, amid cottonwoods, oaks, and elms which it would have done Dr. Holmes’s heart and arms good to see and measure.

“Will you ride, Lucy? will you try the prairie?” asked Saul, the morning following our arrival in Fort Leavenworth.