m all back. And if anything happens coming down on the logs--"

I couldn't finish that anyhow, so I just wrote "Aaron" down in the
corner, and folded the brown paper up. It didn't look any more like
"Aaron" than it did like "Abimelech," though; for I didn't see a single
letter I wrote,--not one.

After that I went to bed, and wished I was Jim Jacobs.

Next morning somebody woke me up with a push, and there was the boss.

"Why, Mr. Cullen!" says I, with a jump.

"Hurry up, man, and eat your breakfast," said he; "Jacobs is down sick
with his cold."

"_Oh!_" said I.

"You and the pork must be back here day after to-morrow,--so be spry,"
said he.

I rather think I was, Johnny.

It was just eight o'clock when I started; it took some time to get
breakfast, and feed the nags, and get orders. I stood there, slapping
the snow with my whip, crazy to be off, hearing the last of what Mr.
Cullen had to say.

They gave me the two horses,--we hadn't but two,--oxen are tougher for
going in, as a general thing,--and the lightest team on the ground; it
was considerably lighter than Bob Stokes's. If it hadn't been for the
snow, I might have put the thing through in two days, but the snow was
up to the creatures' knees in the shady places all along; off from the
road, in among the gullies, you could stick a four-foot measure down
anywhere. So they didn't look for me back before Wednesday night.

"I must have that pork Wednesday night sure," says Cullen.

"Well, sir," says I, "you shall have it Wednesday noon, Providence
permitting; and you shall have it Wednesday night anyway."

"You will have a storm to do it in, I'm afraid," said he, looking at the
clouds, just as I was whipping up. "You're all right on the road, I
suppose?"

"All right," said I; and I'm sure I ought to have been, for the times
I'd been over it.

Bess and Beauty--they were the horses, and of all the ugly nags that
ever I saw Beauty was the ugliest--started off on a round trot, slewing
along down the hill; they knew they were going home just as well as I
did. I looked back, as we turned the corner, to see the boys standing
round in their red shirts, with the snow behind them, and the fire and
the shanties. I felt a mite lonely when I couldn't see them any more;
the snow was so dead still, and there were thirty miles of it to cross
before I could see human face again.

The clouds had an ugly look,--a few flakes had fallen already,--and the
snow was pur