“Well, keep them all as nice as you can; and I will walk out a little, and meet the wagon.”

“Take Argus along, you’d better, case you should meet one of them tiger-cats Silas told on.”

Dora smiled, but called, “Argus!” and at the word a great hound came leaping from one of the out-buildings, and fawned upon his young mistress; then, with stately step and uplifted head, followed her along the faint track worn by the wheels of the ox-cart in the short, sweet grass of the prairie.

The young girl walked slowly, and, at the distance of some rods from the house, stopped, and, leaning against the stem of a great chestnut-tree, stood looking earnestly down the path as it wound into the forest, and out of sight.  Then her eyes turned slowly back, and lingered with a strange and solemn joy upon the scene she had just left; while from her full heart came one whispered word that told the whole story of her emotion,—­

“Home!”

For this was Outpost, Dora’s inheritance from her friend and father, Col.  Blank; and she felt to-night, as she waited to welcome home the family whose head she had become, that her duties and responsibilities were indeed solemn and onerous.  Not too much so, however, for the courage and strength the young girl felt within her soul,—­the energy and will so long without an adequate field of action.

“Plenty to do, and, thank God, plenty of health and strength to do it.  Experience will come of itself,” thought Dora; and from her throbbing heart went up a “song without words,” of joy and praise and high resolve.

It was June now; but the house at Outpost had only been ready for occupancy a week or so.  The family had left Massachusetts about the first of October in the previous autumn, and had spent the winter in Cincinnati; Dora having been reluctantly convinced of the folly of proceeding to Iowa at that season.  With the opening of spring, however, she had made a journey thither, escorted by Charles Windsor, and accompanied by Seth and Mehitable Ross,—­a sturdy New-England couple, who were very glad, in emigrating to the West, to avail themselves of the offers made by Dora, who engaged the man as principal workman upon the new farm, and his wife as assistant in the labors of the house.

The site selected by Col.  Blank proved a very satisfactory one.  But Dora rejected his plans of a house, submitted to her by Mr. Ferrars, as too expensive, and too elaborate for the style of living she proposed; and chose, instead, a simple log-cabin, divided into four rooms, with another at a little distance for the accommodation of Ross and his wife, who were also to keep whatever additional workmen should be required upon the place.

These buildings, neatly and substantially formed of logs from the neighboring wood, were placed at the top of a natural lawn half enclosed by primeval forest; while at its foot nearly a quarter of a mile away, wound the blue waters of the Des Moines; and beyond it, swept to the horizon, mile after mile of prairie, limitless, apparently, as ocean, and, like ocean, solemnly beautiful in its loneliness and calm.