At the town of A—­ Parker and his family obtained accommodations in a poor tavern, where they remained for six weeks, during which time every one suffered more or less severely from fevers, contracted in the poisoned atmosphere in which they had been residing.  During the time that Parker remained at A—­ he obtained more information in regard to Western life, and the prospects of a man like himself getting ahead, as a farmer on wild lands than he had ever before had.  He learned, too, some particulars about his own farm, of which he was before ignorant.  All along the river upon which it was situated, the fall sickness swept off every new-comer, and was in very many instances fatal to the oldest residents.  He was assured that if he went back there to live before frost set in, it would be almost certain death.

The loss of his oldest and best-beloved child; the bad location of his farm; and the new and more correct views he had received on the subject of Western life, completely opened the eyes of Parker to the folly he had committed.

“If I could make any thing like a fair sale of my farm, I think I would let it go, and return to the East,” he said to his wife, after they had all recovered from the worst effect of the fevers from which they had been suffering.

“If you could do as well at the East, Benjamin, I think we would all be happier there,” Rachel replied, in her usual quiet way.  Her husband did not notice that the tears sprang instantly to her eyes, nor did he know with what a quick throb her heart answered to his words.

A short time after this, Parker was fortunate enough to meet with a purchaser for his land, who was willing to take it with all its improvements at government price.  With seven hundred dollars, the remnant of his property, after an absence of eight months, Parker returned to the East a wiser man, and his wife a more thoughtful, pensive, absent-minded woman.  The loss of little Rachel was a sad thing for her.  She could not get over it.  It would have been some comfort to her if they could have brought back the child’s remains, and buried them where her mother had slept for years, and where the body of her father had been so recently laid; but to leave her alone in the wild region where they had buried her, was something of which she could not think without a pang.

On the small sum of money which he had brought back from his western adventure, Parker recommenced his old business in the very town where he lived, and in the store that he occupied at the time of his marriage.  As his means were more contracted, he could not do as good a business as the one he had been so foolish as to give up several years before, and he soon fell into his old habit of complaining and perhaps now with more cause.  To such complaints his meek-tempered wife would reply in some words of encouragement and comfort, as—­

“You do the best you can, and that is as much as can be expected of any one.  You plant and sow—­the Lord must send the rain and the sunshine.”