Presently these friends also, seized upon by some vast impulse which they could not control, in turn arranged their affairs and departed for the West.

Franklin looked about him at the squat buildings of the little town, at the black loam of the monotonous and uninviting fields, at the sordid, set and undeveloping lives around him.

He looked also at the white wagons moving with the sun.

It seemed to him that somewhere out in the vast land beyond the Missouri there beckoned to him a mighty hand, the index finger of some mighty force, imperative, forbidding pause.
The letter of Battersleigh to his friend Captain Franklin fell therefore upon soil already well prepared.

Battersleigh and Franklin had been friends in the army, and their feet had not yet wandered apart in the days of peace.