"Nothing could ever do that, Uncle Sam," I exclaimed, as I came and sat
close to him, while he looked at me bravely, and began to smile.

"Why, what was little missy thinking of?" he asked. "How solid she
looks! Why, I never see the like!"

"Then you ought to have seen it, Uncle Sam. You ought to have seen it
fifty times, with every body who loves you. And who can help loving you,
Uncle Sam?"

"Well, they say that I charged too much for lumber, a-cuttin' on the
cross, and the backstroke work. And it may 'a been so, when I took
agin a man. But to bring up all that, with the mill strown down, is a
cowardly thing, to my thinking. And to make no count of the beadin' I
threw in, whenever it were a straightforrard job, and the turpsy knots,
and the clogging of the teeth--'tis a bad bit to swallow, when the mill
is strown."

"But the mill shall not be strown, Uncle Sam. The mill shall be built
again. And I will find the money."

Mr. Gundry stared at me and shook his head. He could not bear to tell
me how poor I was, while I thought myself almost made of money. "Five
thousand dollars you have got put by for me," I continued, with great
importance. "Five thousand dollars from the sale and the insurance fund.
And five thousand dollars must be five-and-twenty thousand francs. Uncle
Sam, you shall have every farthing of it. And if that won't build the
mill again, I have got my mother's diamonds."

"Five thousand dollars!" cried the Sawyer, in amazement, opening his
great gray eyes at me. And then he remembered the tale which he had
told, to make me seem independent. "Oh yes, to be sure, my dear; now I
recollect. To be sure--to be sure--your own five thousand dollars. But
never will I touch one cent of your nice little fortune; no, not to save
my life. After all, I am not so gone in years but what I can build the
mill again myself. The Lord hath spared my hands and eyes, and gifted me
still with machinery. And Firm is a very handy lad, and can carry out a
job pretty fairly, with better brains to stand over him, although it has
not pleased the Lord to gift him with sense of machinery, like me. But
that is all for the best, no doubt. If Ephraim had too much of brains,
he might have contradicted me. And that I could never abide, God knows,
from any green young jackanapes."

"Oh, Uncle Sam, let me tell you something--something very important!"

"No, my dear, nothing more just now. It has done me good to have a
little talk, a