lls for
it last winter): well lighted, for Father Gurney had his desk in
there to-night. He was working at his catalogue of Sauroidichnites in
Pennsylvania. A tall, lean man, with hook-nose, and peering, protruding,
blue eyes. Captain McKinstry sat by him, turning over Brongniart; his
brain, if one might judge from the frequency with which he blew his
nose, evidently the worse from the wear since he came in; glancing with
an irresolute awe from the book to the bony frame of the old man in his
red dressing-gown, and then to the bony carcasses of the birds on the
wall in their dusty plumage.

"Like enough each to t' other," old Oth used to mutter; "on'y dem birds
done forgot to eat, an' Mars' Gurney neber will, gorry knows dat!"

"If you could, Captain McKinstry,"--it was the old man who spoke now,
with a sort of whiffle through his teeth,--"if you could? A chip of
shale next to this you brought this evening would satisfy me. This is
evidently an original fossil foot-mark: no work of Indians. I'll go with
you,"--gathering his dressing-gown about his lank-legs.

"No," said the Captain, some sudden thought bringing gravity and
self-reliance into his face. "My little girl is going with Uncle Dan.
It's the last walk I can take with her. Go, child, and bring your
bonnet."

Little Lizzy (people generally called her that) got up from the
door-step where she sat, and ran up-stairs. She was one of those women
who look as if they ought to be ordered and taken care of. Grey put a
light shawl over her shoulders as she passed her. Grey thought of Lizzy
always very much as a piece of fine porcelain among some earthen crocks,
she being a very rough crock herself. Did not she have to make a
companion in some Ways of old Oth? When she had no potatoes for dinner,
or could get no sewing to pay for Lizzy's shoes, (Lizzy _was_ hard on
her shoes, poor thing!) she found herself talking it over with Oth. The
others did not-care for such things, and it would be mean to worry
them, but Oth liked a misery, and it was such a relief to tell things
sometimes! The old negro had been a slave of her grandfather's until he
was of age; he was quite helpless now, having a disease of the spine.
But Grey had brought him to town with them, "because, you know, uncle, I
couldn't keep house without you, at all,--I really couldn't." So he had
his chair covered with sheepskin in the sunniest corner always, and
Grey made over her father's old clothes for him on