yer near the top, `I
can stop when I like'; but ye'll come to a pint, lad, when ye'll try to
stop an' find ye can't--when ye'd give all ye own to leave off runnin';
but ye'll have to go on faster an' faster, till yer carried off yer
legs, and, mayhap, dashed to bits at the bottom. Smokin' and drinkin'
are both alike. Ye can begin when you please, an', up to a certain
pint, ye can stop when ye please; but after that pint, ye _can't_ stop
o' yer own free will--ye'd die first. Many an' many a poor fellow _has_
died first, as I know."

"An' pray, Mister Solomon, do _you_ smoke?" inquired March testily,
thinking that this question would reduce his companion to silence.

"No, never."

"Not smoke?" cried March in amazement. The idea of a trapper not
smoking was to him a thorough and novel incomprehensibility.

"No; nor drink neither," said Dick. "I once did both, before I came to
this part o' the country, and I thank the Almighty for bringing me to a
place where it warn't easy to get either drink or baccy--specially
drink, which I believe would have laid me under the sod long ago, if I
had bin left in a place where I could ha' got it. An' now, as Mary has
just left us, poor thing, I'll tell ye how I came by the big iron pot.
There's no mystery about it; but as it b'longed to the poor child's
father, I didn't want to speak about it before her."

Dick placed an elbow on each knee, and, resting his forehead upon his
hands, stared for some moments into the fire ere he again spoke.

"It's many years now," said he in a low, sad tone, "since I left home,
and--but that's nothin' to do wi' the pint," he added quickly. "You
see, March, when I first came to this part o' the world I fell in with a
comrade--a trapper--much to my likin'. This trapper had been jilted by
some girl, and came away in a passion, detarminin' never more to return
to his native place. I never know'd where he come from, nor the
partic'lars of his story, for that was a pint he'd never speak on. I
don't believe I ever know'd his right name. He called himself Adam;
that was the only name I ever know'd him by.

"Well, him an' me became great friends. He lived wi' a band of Pawnee
Injuns, and had married a wife among them; not that she was a pure Injun
neither, she was a half-breed. My Mary was their only child; she was a
suckin' babe at that time. Adam had gin her no name when we first met,
an' I remember him askin' me one day what he should call he