_Giles Rae Beautifies His Inheritance_ By eight o'clock the next morning, out under a cloudy sky, the Raes were ready and eager for their start to the new Jerusalem.

Even the sick woman's face wore a kind of soft and faded radiance in the excitement of going.

On her mattress, she had been tenderly installed in one of the two covered wagons that carried their household goods.

The wagon in which she lay was to be taken across the river by Seth Wright,--for the moment no Wild Ram of the Mountains, but a soft-cooing dove of peace.
Permission had been granted him by Brockman to recross the river on some needful errands; and, having once proved the extreme sensitiveness, not to say irritability, of those in temporary command, he was now resolved to give as little eclat as possible to certain superior aspects of his own sanctity.

He spoke low and deferentially, and his mien was that of a modest, retiring man who secretly thought ill of himself.
He mounted the wagon in which the sick woman lay, sat well back under the bowed cover, clucked low to the horses, and drove off toward the ferry.