CHAPTER XV.
ROCK RIVER--HOURS OF TROUBLE.
It was late on the following day (March 13th) when we took leave of our kind hostess.

She loaded us with cakes, good wishes, and messages to her sister Dixon and the children.

We journeyed pleasantly along through a country beautiful in spite of its wintry appearance.
There was a house at Buffalo Grove, at which we stopped for half an hour, and where a nice-looking young girl presented us with some maple-sugar of her own making.

She entertained us with the history of a contest between two rival claimants for the patronage of the stage-wagon, the proprietors of which had not decided whether to send it by Buffalo Grove or by another route, which she pointed out to us, at no great distance.

The _driver_, she took care to inform us, was in favor of the former; and the blush with which she replied in the affirmative to our inquiry, "Is he a young man ?" explained the whole matter satisfactorily.
At length, just at sunset, we reached the dark, rapid waters of the Rock River.