almost lost to my family and, indeed, I
hardly regretted it, for nothing would have brought me back while my
wife lived, and, if I were not to be with my friends, why eat my heart
out with longings for them? So, for nearly twenty years, I lived the
life of adventure, danger, and privation, that draws its only charm
from its independence.

"At last came a letter from your mother. It found its way to me from
fort to fort, brought up part of the way with the letters to the
troops stationed at our upper forts, then carried by the Indian
runners to the trading-posts of the fur-companies till it reached me
in the depths of the Rocky Mountains. My wife was dead,--she had died
suddenly; my property, all that she had not squandered, (and it was so
tied up by my father's forethought that she could only throw away a
part of it,) was my own again; my sister longed to see me, and
promised me a welcome to her house and heart. I grew restless from
that moment, and, converting into money the not inconsiderable wealth
with which I had surrounded myself in the shape of furs, horses,
buffalo-robes, and so forth, I came down to the States again to begin
life anew, a man of forty-five, my head whitened, and my features
marked before their time from the life of exposure which I had
led. Alice, I, too, was too late. I had dropped out of the tide of
life and progress in my twenty years' seclusion, and, struggle as I
might, I could not retrieve the time lost. The present age knew not of
me,--I had lost my place in it; the thoughts, feelings, habits, of all
around were strange to me; I had been pushed out of the line of march,
and never could I fall into step again. In society, in business, in
domestic life, it was all the same. Trial after trial taught me, at
last, the truth; and when I had learned not only to believe it, but to
accept it, I came home to my father's house, now mine, and made myself
friends of my books,--those faithful ones who were as true to me as if
I had never deserted them. They have brought me content, if not
happiness; and you, Alice, you and Kate, you have filled fully an old
man's heart."

Alice's tears were dropping fast on Uncle John's hand as she said,--

"I will be more to you henceforward than ever before. I have nothing
else to live for now. Kate is the home child; but I--I will stay with
you, and you shall teach me, too, to be contented,--to find my
happiness, as you do, in making the happiness of all around."