built up with feather beds in the cold weather; spread now with thick linen sheets.  Mrs. Spurgeon had woven some of these things.  Her loom stood yet in one of the outhouses, on occasion set up in the living room when she brought herself to the task of weaving, rarely now.  She was too old for much labor.  Sarah helped Zoe with the meal.  Reverdy stayed to share it with us.  But I had learned that he lived at the tavern, though he disliked it thoroughly.

Some nights later I asked Zoe to walk out with me.  She was timid about the rattlesnakes which she said were everywhere through the woods and the grass, sometimes crawling into the roads.  There were wildcats and wolves too in the timber; but they were not so likely to be encountered now as in the winter time.  I had a pocket pistol, and taking up a hickory stick that was in the corner, I urged Zoe to allay her fears and come.  Sarah joined me in prevailing upon her.  Zoe doubtless knew that I wished to talk with her about the estate; and at last she walked with me out of the house and into the road.

After a few minutes of silence I asked her about my father:  what were his spirits; his way of life; where did he live; did she live with him?  Then Zoe told me some of the things I had learned from Mr. Brooks.  And as her mother had died when Zoe was born she had been taken by Mrs. Spurgeon to raise.  She said that her father, my father, had lived a part of the time at the inn, and a part of the time at his house on the farm; that during the last two years of his life she had seen more of him than formerly, though he was often in St. Louis, and even New Orleans.  And she added with hesitation that he drank a good deal at the last, and was often depressed and silent.  “Was he kind to you?” I asked.  Zoe said that he was never anything but kindness, and that he provided her with comforts and with schooling whenever any one came along to teach the children of the community.  I had already seen around the house a copy of the Spectator, and Pope’s poems.  Zoe told me that she had read these books, part of them over and over, and that she had had a teacher the year before who had helped her to understand them.  I began to delimn Zoe as a girl of intelligence.  Of vital spirits she had an abundance....  The night was very warm and of wonderful stillness, no breeze.  We heard the cry of what Zoe called “varmints” in the woods.  A night bird was singing.  She told me it was the whippoorwill.  I never had heard a more thrillingly melancholy note.  Once Zoe stepped upon a stick in the road.  Thinking it was a snake she gave a cry and leaped to one side.  But I calmed her and we kept our way....  I had never seen the stars to the same advantage, not even on the ocean.  They were spread above us in infinite numbers, and of remarkable brilliancy.  And there was the prairie, stretching as far as the eye could penetrate into the haze of the horizon, except where a distant forest rimmed the edge of the visible landscape.