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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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part with her boy, sat down among the buffalo-skins. The old woman was next handed in and seated, and George and Jim placed on a rough board seat front of them, and Phineas mounted in front. “Farewell, my friends,” said Simeon, from without. “God bless you!” answered all from within. And the wagon drove off, rattling and jolting over the frozen road. There was no opportunity for conversation, on account of the roughness of the way and the noise of the wheels. The vehicle, therefore, rumbled on, through long, dark stretches of woodland,- over wide, dreary plains,- up hills, and down valleys,- and on, on, on they jogged, hour after hour. The child soon fell asleep, and lay heavily in his mother’s lap. The poor, frightened old woman at last forgot her fears; and, even Eliza, as the night waned, found all her anxieties insufficient to keep her eyes from closing. Phineas seemed, on the whole, the briskest of the company, and beguiled his long drive with whistling certain very unquaker-like songs, as he went on. But about three o’clock George’s ear caught the hasty and decided click of a horse’s hoof coming behind them at some distance, and jogged Phineas by the el- bow. Phineas pulled up his horses, and listened. “That must be Michael,” he said; “I think I know the sound of his gallop;” and he rose up and stretched his head anxiously back over the road. A man riding in hot haste was now dimly descried at the top of a distant hill. |
