if he had only said this, or
thought about it, we might have looked at him with less sadness of our
own.

But he never said any thing about himself, nor gave any opening for
our comfort to come to him. Only from day to day he behaved gently and
lovingly to both of us, as if his own trouble must be fought out by
himself, and should dim no other happiness. And this kept us thinking of
his sorrow all the more, so that I could not even look at him without a
flutter of the heart, which was afraid to be a sigh.

At last, upon the great mountain range, through which we now were
toiling, with the snow little more than a mantle for the peaks, and a
sparkling veil for sunrise, dear Uncle Sam, who had often shown signs of
impatience, drew me apart from the rest. Straightforward and blunt as he
generally was, he did not seem altogether ready to begin, but pulled off
his hat, and then put it on again, the weather being now cold and hot
by turns. And while he did this he was thinking at his utmost, as every
full vein of his forehead declared. And being at home with his ways, I
waited.

"Think you got ahead of me? No, not you," he exclaimed at last, in
reply to some version of his own of my ideas, which I carefully made a
nonentity under the scrutiny of his keen blue eyes. "No, no, missy;
you wait a bit. Uncle Sam was not hatched yesterday, and it takes fifty
young ladies to go round him."

"Is that from your size, Uncle Sam, or your depth?"

"Well, a mixture of both, I do believe. Now the last thing you ever
would think of, if you lived to be older than Washington's nurse, is the
very thing I mean to put to you. Only you must please to take it well,
according to my meaning. You see our Firm going to a shadow, don't you?
Very well; the fault of that is all yourn. Why not up and speak to him?"

"I speak to him every day, Uncle Sam, and I spare no efforts to fatten
him. I am sure I never dreamed of becoming such a cook. But soon he will
have Suan Isco."

"Old Injun be darned! It's not the stomach, it's the heart as wants
nourishment with yon poor lad. He looketh that pitiful at you sometimes,
my faith, I can hardly tell whether to laugh at his newings or cry at
the lean face that does it."

"You are not talking like yourself, Uncle Sam. And he never does any
thing of the kind. I am sure there is nothing to laugh at."

"No, no; to be sure not. I made a mistake. Heroic is the word, of
course--every thing is heroic."

"It is h