advised.

"Well, we must lose no time," said Levi.

"But Lizzi believes Gill is dead," Peter remarked.

"Dead nothin'," replied the stolid Matthi. "He's most likely foolin'
another girl some place, and I'd like ter git a chance ter put a stop to
his gallantin'."

Matthi made a gesture suggestive of wringing the neck of a chicken.

"Come, boys," Levi said, "let's swear. Join your right hands to mine
above our father's head. Now say, we are three brothers whose sister
has been deeply wronged, and we do swear in the presence of our aged
father and upon our honor as men to seek John Gillfillan, our sister's
betrayer, and compel him to return to her and make her his wife, and if
he will not, to avenge our sister's honor by his blood."

"We swear," they all said solemnly, after the formula had been repeated.

Peter bowed his approval, and encouraged them by saying:

"Go to-morrer, boys, and God bless ye. I'll take care of Lizzi."

Levi pulled from his pocket some money, not very much, although it was
the savings of two years, and began counting it in the moonlight, while
the others watched him curiously. He fingered the bills fondly. He
slowly dropped the gold coins into his hat, and listened with evident
delight to the clinking of the falling pieces. He held the silver close
to the window, and looked from it to the gold, from the gold to the
moon.

"The moon is a silver dollar, and the sun is a twenty-dollar
gold-piece."

About to make a sacrifice, he said a silly thing that his father and
brothers should think he gave easily and without pain.

"There, father," he said, turning first the silver, then the gold, into
his father's hat, and on top of the yellow and argent pile laying the
paper money, "there, father, that's for Lizzi, and will keep her until
we come back, bringing her husband. If we don't find him, we'll work for
her."

Peter, seized with a fit of trembling, sat down helplessly, and picking
up the hat, ran his fingers among the coins, clinking them. Cassi and
Matthi looked on in quiet admiration, both wishing heartily that the
balance due them on the furnace books was not so light. Although half
ashamed to place his small savings beside Levi's princely gift, Matthi
remarked:

"Guess if we put our money together it would look bigger, Cassi."

"Kind of small potatoes beside of Levi's pile," Cassi replied; "but if
Levi will write us an order, we'll sign it, hey, Matthi?"

Levi had with him an in