Map of the period([Part 1])([Part 2])

SUSTAINED HONOR.

CHAPTER I.

THE YOUNG EMIGRANT.

[Illustration]

The first recollections of Fernando Stevens, the hero of this romance, were of "moving." He was sitting on his mother's knee. How long he had been sitting there he did not know, nor did he know how he came there; but he knew that it was his mother and that they were in a great covered wagon, and that he had a sister and brother, older than himself, in the wagon. The wagon was filled with household effects, which he seemed to know belonged to that mother on whose knee he sat and that father who was sitting on the box driving the horses which pulled the wagon. Fernando Stevens was never exactly certain as to his age at the time of this experience; but he could not have been past three, and perhaps not more than two years old, when he thus found himself with his father's family and all their effects in a wagon going somewhere.

He knew not from whence they came, nor did he know whither they were going. It was pleasant to sit on his mother's knee and with his great blue eyes watch those monster horses jogging along dragging after them the great world, which in his limited comprehension was all the world he knew,--the covered wagon. Suddenly some bright, revolving object attracted his attention, and he fixed his eyes on it. It was the wagon tire, and he saw it crushing and killing the grass at the side of the road, or rolling and flattening down the dust in long streaks.

Then they descended a hill. It was not a long hill, but seemed rather steep. There was water at the bottom. He remembered seeing the bright, sparkling wavelets and never forgot the impression they produced. There was a boat at the bottom of the hill, and the wagon and horses were driven into the boat. A man and boy began propelling the long sweeps or oars. He watched the proceeding in infantile wonder and especially remembered how the water dropped in sparkling crystals from the oar blades. The boy had on a red cap or fez with a tassel. That boy, that cap and that oar with the sparkling dripping water from the blade were to him the brightest pictures and greatest wonders he had ever known.