At last the company got off, going by river to Council Bluffs, and thence striking out upon the almost interminable trail, that, however surely it might lead to fortune, was far from being a royal road thereto.  It was two months later when a member of the party, compelled by ill-health to abandon the tedious journey and return home, brought to Clarksville the first intelligence of the achievements of Doctor Hanchett in the capacity of a physician and surgeon in actual practice.  These achievements cannot be recorded here, but a single incident may be mentioned as indicating the estimation in which the doctor’s skill speedily came to be held by his companions.  Before the expedition had been three weeks upon the march his surviving comrades, taking alarm at the rapidly augmenting number of lonely graves with which they were dotting the dreary trail, hastily formed a conspiracy to despoil him of his enginery of death.  Under the silent stars, what time the doctor was sleeping the deep sleep of the overworked practitioner, his medicine-case and his miscellaneous assortment of cutlery were quietly spirited away, and were never seen again.  The doctor proclaimed his loss upon waking in the morning, and felt it keenly.  He declared, however, that he deplored the casualty chiefly in the interest of his companions, who were thus deprived, at one fell blow, of his further services; and he cursed very heartily, in the same interest, the “dastardly red-skins,” whom he assumed to be guilty of the theft.

Dora and her mother waited long and anxiously for a letter from the doctor’s own hand, and after many months it came.  It was dated from “the Heart of the Gold Region,” and, after asking them to join him in due ascriptions of thanks to the Almighty Powers for his deliverance from many perils and his safe arrival in the promised land, and after passing lightly over the invaluable services he had been able to render to his companions in his professional capacity—­it was not for a modest man to dwell upon these—­the doctor proceeded to state frankly that his success in the gold fields had far exceeded his most sanguine hopes; that, indeed, he might even then call himself an opulent man, inasmuch as nothing but the necessary papers were wanting to confirm him in the possession of a half interest in the Big Grizzly Claim—­a claim that promised an enormously rich yield as soon as arrangements could be perfected for developing it.  He advised his daughter to give up her school at once, and to begin to prepare herself for that happy change in her circumstances which was now so near at hand; and he closed by requesting her to send him by return of mail fifty dollars, and more if she could possibly spare more, as he urgently required a little money for “present needs.”