“Cora, my darling, we must part here,” said Mr. Clarence, gathering up his effects, as the train slackened speed.

“Oh, Uncle Clarence!  Dear Uncle Clarence!  God bless you!  God bless you!” sobbed Corona.

“Keep up your heart, dear one.  You may see me sooner than you dream of.  The missionary mania is sometimes contagious.  You have it in its most pronounced form.  And I have been sitting by you for eight hours,” replied Mr. Clarence, forgetting his prudent resolution to say nothing to Corona of an incipient plan in his mind.

“What do you mean, dear Uncle Clarence?” she anxiously inquired.

“I hardly know myself, Corona.  But ponder my words in your heart, dear one.  They may mean something.  Here we are!  Good-by!  Good-by!  God bless you!” exclaimed Mr. Clarence.

“Good-by!  God bless you!” cried Corona, and they parted—­Clarence jumping off the train just as it started again, at the imminent risk of his life, yet with lucky immunity from harm.

Corona, looking through the side window, saw him standing safely on the platform waiting a North End train to come up—­saw him only for an instant as her train flashed onward, and “pondered his words in her heart,” and wondered what they meant.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

ON THE FRONTIER.

Traveling in the ante-bellum days, even by steamboats and railway trains, was not the rapid transit of the present time.  It took one day for our travelers to reach Wheeling.  There they embarked on a river steamer for St. Louis.  On Monday morning they took a steamboat for Leavenworth, where they arrived early in the evening.

This was the first and best part of their long journey.  The second part must of necessity be very different.  Here their railway and steamboat travel ceased, and the remainder of their course to the far southwestern frontier must be by military wagons through an almost untrodden wilderness.

I know that since the days of which I write this section of the country has been wonderfully developed, and the wilderness has been made to “bloom and blossom as the rose,” but in those days it was still laid down on the maps as “The Great American Desert.”  And Fort Leavenworth appeared to us as an extreme outpost of civilization in the West, and a stopping place and a point of new departure for troops en route for the southwestern frontier forts.

Captain Neville and his party landed at Leavenworth on the afternoon of a fine November day.  The captain led the way to the colonel’s quarters.  A sentinel was walking up and down the front.  He saluted the captain, who passed into the quarters, where an orderly received the party, showed them into a parlor, gave them seats, and then took the captain’s card to the colonel.

In a few moments Col. ——­ entered the parlor, looked around, recognized Captain Neville, and greeted him with: