Mary's face at once assumed an expression of earnest gravity, and she
answered, "Yes," in a low, sad tone.

March was going to have inquired further on this point, but fear lest he
should hurt the feelings of the poor child induced him to change the
subject.

"And how came ye," said he, "first to meet with Dick?"

Mary pressed her lips.

"Oh! very well; don't tell if it ain't right, by no manner o' means. Do
ye think that Dick intends to keep ye here always?"

"Me not know."

"Humph! An' you say he's good to ye?"

"Oh yes," cried Mary with a sudden blaze of animation on her usually
placid countenance, "him's good, very good--gooder to me than nobody
else."

"Well, I could have guessed that, seein' that nobody else has had
anything to do with ye but him for ten years past."

"But him's not only good to me--good to everybody," continued the girl
with increasing animation. "You not know _how_ good--can't know."

"Certainly not," assented March; "it ain't possible to know, not havin'
bin told; but if you'll tell me I'll listen."

March Marston had at last struck a chord that vibrated intensely in the
bosom of the warm-hearted child. She drew her log closer to him in her
eagerness to dilate on the goodness of her adopted father, and began to
pour into his willing ears such revelations of the kind and noble deeds
that he had done, that March was fired with enthusiasm, and began to
regard his friend Dick in the light of a demigod. Greatheart, in the
"Pilgrim's Progress," seemed most like to him, he thought, only Dick
seemed grander, which was a natural feeling; for Bunyan drew his
Greatheart true to nature, while Mary and March had invested Dick with a
robe of romance, which glittered so much that he looked preternaturally
huge.

March listened with rapt attention; but as the reader is not March, we
will not give the narrative in Mary's bad English. Suffice it to say,
that she told how, on one occasion, Dick happened to be out hunting near
to a river, into which he saw a little Indian child fall. It was
carried swiftly by the current to a cataract fifty feet high, and in a
few minutes would have been over and dashed to pieces, when Dick happily
saw it, and plunging in brought it safe to shore, yet with such
difficulty that he barely gained the bank, and grasped the branch of an
overhanging willow, when his legs were drawn over the edge of the fall.
He had to hold on for ten minutes, till men came from the