Whenever any of them drew near to our wagon I could see that their faces, under the dust, were drawn and anxious like my father's.

And my father, like them, had a long-barrelled rifle close to hand as he drove.
Also, to one side, limped a score or more of foot-sore, yoke-galled, skeleton oxen, that ever paused to nip at the occasional tufts of withered grass, and that ever were prodded on by the tired-faced youths who herded them.

Sometimes one or another of these oxen would pause and low, and such lowing seemed as ominous as all else about me.
Far, far away I have a memory of having lived, a smaller lad, by the tree- lined banks of a stream.

And as the wagon jolts along, and I sway on the seat with my father, I continually return and dwell upon that pleasant water flowing between the trees.

I have a sense that for an interminable period I have lived in a wagon and travelled on, ever on, with this present company.
But strongest of all upon me is what is strong upon all the company, namely, a sense of drifting to doom.