She could only tell of living a year or so at a time on some run-down or never run-up farm in Indiana or Illinois, always in a log cabin in a clearing; or of her brothers and sisters who had been "bound out" because the family was so large; and now of this last voyage in search of an estate in Negosha.
"I can make bread," said she, after a silence.

"Kin you ?" When I told her I couldn't she told me how.

It was the old-fashioned salt-rising bread, the receipt for which she gave me; and when I asked her to write it down I found that she was even a poorer scribe than I was.

We were two mighty ignorant young folks, but we got it down, and that night I set emptins[6] for the first time, and I kept trying, and advising with the women-folks, until I could make as good salt-rising bread as any one.

When we had finished this her father was calling her to come, as they were starting on toward Negosha; and I gave Rowena money enough to buy her a calico dress pattern at the next settlement.
She tried to resist, and her eyes filled with tears as she took the money and chokingly tried to thank me for it.