heftage. If there's a pound here,
there's not an ounce under six hundred-weight, I'll lay a thousand
dollars. Miss Rema, give a name to him. All the thundering nuggets has
thundering names."

"Then this shall be called 'Uncle Sam,'" I answered, "because he is the
largest and the best of all."

"It shall stand, miss," cried Martin, who was in great spirits, and
seemed to have bettered himself forever. "You could not have given it a
finer name, miss, if you had considered for a century. Uncle Sam is the
name of our glorious race, from the kindness of our natur'. Every body's
uncle we are now, in vartue of superior knowledge, and freedom, and
giving of general advice, and stickin' to all the world, or all the good
of it. Darned if old Sam aren't the front of creation!"

"Well, well," said the Sawyer, "let us call it 'Uncle Sam,' if the dear
young lady likes it; it would be bad luck to change the name; but, for
all that, we must look uncommon sharp, or some of our glorious race will
come and steal it afore we unbutton our eyes."

"Pooh!" cried Martin; but he knew very well that his master's words were
common-sense; and we left him on guard with a double-barreled gun, and
Jowler to keep watch with him. And the next day he told us that he had
spent the night in such a frame of mind from continual thought that when
our pet cow came to drink at daybreak, it was but the blowing of her
breath that saved her from taking a bullet between her soft tame eyes.

Now it could not in any kind of way hold good that such things should
continue; and the Sawyer, though loath to lose sight of the nugget,
perceived that he must not sacrifice all the morals of the neighborhood
to it, and he barely had time to dispatch it on its road at the bottom
of a load of lumber, with Martin to drive, and Jowler to sit up, and
Firm to ride behind, when a troop of mixed robbers came riding across,
with a four-wheel cart and two sturdy mules--enough to drag off every
thing. They had clearly heard of the golden toad, and desired to know
more of him; but Uncle Sam, with his usual blandness, met these men at
the gate of his yard, and upon the top rail, to ease his arm, he rested
a rifle of heavy metal, with seven revolving chambers. The robbers found
out that they had lost their way, and Mr. Gundry answered that so they
had, and the sooner they found it in another direction, the better it
would be for them. They thought that he had all his men inside, and th