Then the hedge hog said:  “Help yourself.”

Sambo went to take some and just got his face full of ’em so it looked like a head o’ barley.  They had to be took out with a pinchers or they’d ‘a’ sewed his skin on to a barn door.  That was their game.  They tried to sew everybody’s skin on a barn door.

Every night the hedge hog came around and said:  “Needles, needles, anybody want some needles.”

Now Sambo always answered:  “No thank you, I’ve had enough.”

“Where’s your mother?” Sarah asked of the ten-year-old girl.

“Dead.  Died when my little brother was born.”

“Who takes care of you?”

“Father and—­God.  Father says God does most of it.”

“Oh dear!” Sarah exclaimed, with a look of pity.

They had a good dinner of fresh biscuit and honey and venison and eggs and tea.  While they were eating Samson told Brimstead of the land of plenty.

After dinner, while Brimstead was bringing the team, one of his children, the blonde, pale, tattered little girl of six, climbed into the wagon seat and sat holding a small rag doll, which Sarah had given her.  When they were ready to go she stubbornly refused to get down.

“I’m goin’ away,” she said.  “I’m goin’ aw-a-ay off to find my mother.  I don’t like this place.  There ain’t no Santa Claus here.  I’m goin’ away.”

She clung to the wagon seat and cried loudly when her father took her down.

“Ain’t that enough to break a man’s heart?” he said with a sorrowful look.

Then Samson turned to Brimstead and asked: 

“Look here, Henry Brimstead, are you a drinking man?  Honor bright now.”

“Never drink a thing but water and tea.”

“Do you know of anybody who’ll give ye anything for what you own here?”

“There’s a man in the next town who offered me three hundred and fifty dollars for my interest.”

“How far is it?”

“Three miles.”

“Come along with us and get the money if you can.  I’ll help ye fit up and go where ye can earn a living.”

“I’d like to, but my horse is lame and I can’t leave the children.”

“Put ’em right in this wagon and come on.  If there’s a livery in the place, I’ll send ye home.”

So the children rode in the wagon and Samson and Brimstead walked, while Sarah drove the team to the next village.  There the good woman bought new clothes for the whole Brimstead family and Brimstead sold his interest in the sand plains and bought a good pair of horses, with harness and some cloth for a wagon cover, and had fifty dollars in his pocket and a new look in his face.  He put his children on the backs of the horses and led them to his old home, with a sack of provisions on his shoulder.  He was to take the track of the Traylors next day and begin his journey to the shores of the Sangamon.

Samson had asked about him in the village and learned that he was an honest man who had suffered bad luck.  A neighbor’s wife had taken his children for two years, but bad health had compelled her to give them up.