tremendous
responsibility had been removed from his shoulders.

"I'll write to the man to-day, informing him that you will go to work
at once," added Don. "I don't suppose you could tell, even within a
week or two, of the time it will take you to fill the order, could
you?"

"I shouldn't like to make a guess," said David. "The birds rove
around so that a fellow can't tell anything about them. They are
plenty now, but next week there may not be half a dozen flocks to be
found."

"Then I will write to him that the best you can say is, that you will
lose no time. How does the pointer come on?"

"Finely," said David. "He works better than half the old dogs now.
He's smart, I tell you."

"He takes after his owner, you see. I hope to get firmly on my feet
next week, and if I do, I want to try him. Good-by."

"Now, there are two friends worth having," thought David, gazing
almost lovingly after the brothers, as they rode away. "I don't
wonder that everybody likes them. A hundred and fifty dollars! Whew!
won't mother have some nice, warm clothes this winter, and won't she
have everything else she wants, too?"

The boy did not see how he could possibly keep his good fortune to
himself until his mother came home that night. His first impulse was
to go over to the neighbor's house, and tell her all about it, but he
was restrained by the thought that that would be a waste of time. He
could make one trap in the hour and a half that it would take him to
go and return, and the sooner his traps were all completed, the
sooner he could get to work. His next thought was that he would let
the traps rest for that day, go down to the landing, purchase some
nice present for his mother and surprise her with it when she came
home. Of course he had no money to pay for it, but what did that
matter? Silas Jones was always willing to trust anybody whom he knew
to be reliable, and when he learned that his customer would have a
hundred and fifty dollars of his own in a few weeks, he would surely
let him have a warm dress or a pair of shoes. When his money came he
would get his mother something fine to wear to church; and, while he
was about it, wouldn't it be a good plan for him to send to Memphis
for a nice hunting outfit and a few dozen steel traps? Like his
father, when he first thought of the barrel with the eighty thousand
dollars in it, David looked upon himself as rich already; and if he
had attempted to carry out all the grand ideas