ome down, he persisted in walking
about on three legs, carrying my hat, a crushed and shapeless mass,
clasped to his breast with the remaining one; how I missed him at last,
and finally discovered him seated on a table in one of the tenantless
cabins, with a bottle of sirup between his paws, vainly endeavoring to
extract its contents,--these and other details of that eventful day I
shall not weary the reader with now. Enough that, when Dick Sylvester
returned, I was pretty well fagged out, and the baby was rolled up, an
immense bolster, at the foot of the couch, asleep. Sylvester's first
words after our greeting were,--

"Isn't he delicious?"

"Perfectly. Where did you get him?"

"Lying under his dead mother, five miles from here," said Dick, lighting
his pipe. "Knocked her over at fifty yards: perfectly clean shot; never
moved afterwards. Baby crawled out, scared, but unhurt. She must have
been carrying him in her mouth, and dropped him when she faced me; for
he wasn't more than three days old, and not steady on his pins. He takes
the only milk that comes to the settlement, brought up by Adams Express
at seven o'clock every morning. They say he looks like me. Do you
think so?" asked Dick with perfect gravity, stroking his hay-colored
mustachios, and evidently assuming his best expression.

I took leave of the baby early the next morning in Sylvester's
cabin, and, out of respect to Pomposo's feelings, rode by without any
postscript of expression. But the night before I had made Sylvester
solemnly swear, that, in the event of any separation between himself and
Baby, it should revert to me. "At the same time," he had added, "it's
only fair to say that I don't think of dying just yet, old fellow; and I
don't know of any thing else that would part the cub and me."

Two months after this conversation, as I was turning over the morning's
mail at my office in San Francisco, I noticed a letter bearing
Sylvester's familiar hand. But it was post-marked "Stockton," and I
opened it with some anxiety at once. Its contents were as follows:--

"O FRANK!--Don't you remember what we agreed upon anent the baby? Well,
consider me as dead for the next six months, or gone where cubs can't
follow me,--East. I know you love the baby; but do you think, dear
boy,--now, really, do you think you COULD be a father to it? Consider
this well. You are young, thoughtless, well-meaning enough; but dare you
take upon yourself the functions of gu