You may think it odd that she was not afraid to make the long journey, but there are advantages in being of a dependent nature.  Hannah had always done everything for her, and had kept her safe from harm.  Hannah was with her now, so there was nothing to fear.  She left all that to Hannah, who did it, poor child, with the greatest thoroughness!

Now that the excitement of overcoming Hillsboro opposition was passed; now that they were really started, with herself as sole leader and guide, responsibility fell like a black cloud upon her young heart.  There was nothing she did not fear—­for Ann Mary, of course—­from wolves and Indians to fatigue or thunderstorms.

A dozen times that day, as they paced slowly over the rough trail, she asked her sister anxiously if she were not too hot or too cold, or too tired or too faint, imitating as best she could the matter and manner of the doctoring old women.  However, Ann Mary surprised herself, as well as Hannah, by being none of the uncomfortable things that her sister kept suggesting to her she might very well be.  It was perfect June weather, they were going over some of the loveliest country in the world, and Ann Mary was out of doors for the first time in four weeks or more.

She “kept up” wonderfully well, and they made good time, reaching by dusk, as they had hoped to do, a farmer’s house on the downward dip of the mountain to the east.  Here, their story being told, they were hospitably received, and Ann Mary was clapped into the airless inner room and fed with gruel and dipped toast.  But she had had fresh air and exercise all day, and a hearty meal of cold venison and corn bread at their noonday rest, so she slept soundly.

The next day they went across a wide, hilly valley, up another range of low mountains, and down on the other side.  The country was quite strange to them, and somehow, before they knew it, they were not on the road recommended to them by their hosts of the night before.  Night overtook them when they were still, as the phrase has come down in our family, “in a miserable, dismal place of wood.”

Hannah’s teeth chattered for very terror as she saw their plight; but she spoke cheerfully to Ann Mary and the boy, who looked to her for courage, and told them that they were to have the fun of sleeping under the stars.

Boys were the same then as now, and Remember Williams was partly shivering with dread of bears and Indians and things, and partly glowing with anticipatory glory of telling the Hillsboro boys all about the adventure.  Hannah soothed the first and inflamed the second emotion until she had Remember strutting about gathering firewood, as brave as a lion.

Very probably Ann Mary would have been frightened to death, if she had not been so sleepy from her long day out of doors that she could not keep her eyes open.  And then, of course, everything must be all right, because there was Hannah!