The clear water of the creek sparkled and rippled musically over a bed of yellow gravel, while the soft lush grass clothing each bank waved gracefully in the light wind, rising and falling like the waves of the sea.

It was all primitive nature untouched, nor was there evidence anywhere within our vision, that this isolated valley in the midst of the prairie, had ever before been visited by man.

No dim trail crossed our path; no appearance of life, human or animal, met our eyes; we forced our own passage onward, with nothing to guide us, feeling more and more deeply the dread loneliness and silence of this strangely desolate paradise.
The rising sun topped the summit of the bluff, its red rays seeming to bridge with spans of gossamer the little valley up which we toiled.

I had lost my interest, and was walking doggedly on, with eyes bent upon the ground, when the girl beside me cried out suddenly, a new excitement in her voice.
"Oh, there is a cabin! see! Over yonder; just beyond that big oak, where the bluff turns." Her eager face was aglow, her outstretched hand pointing eagerly.
The logs of which the little building had been constructed, still in their native bark, blended so perfectly with the drab hillside beyond, that for the moment none of us caught the distant outlines.

Tim possessed the keenest sight, and his voice was first to speak.
"Sure, Miss, thet's a cabin, all right," he said grimly.