t, the original
boot-tops yet towering in the region of his ears, and the upper half
of the original beaver crowning his well-developed brain, there He
was. Slowly and carefully he descended from the back of his shambling
steed, settled himself well in his boots, pulled up the collar of his
great-coat--and there was little but collar left of it--tipped the
curtailed and weatherbeaten stovepipe to the proper angle, opened his
paternal arms and feebly embraced his daughter. He announced himself
to all concerned as a broken man--a poor unfortunate going home to
die, where his bones might rest with those of his ancestors, and where
his humble name and his honorable record in the service of his country
would be cherished by his fellow-citizens after he should be gone.
Providence had surely, in his extremity, drawn his daughter to his
succor. Now he was relieved of all anxiety, and might turn his mind
to things above. His daughter would fan the spark of life, and keep
it burning, God willing, till the old home should be reached. Then he
would release her from her labor of love. Then he would be at peace
with all the world, and would cheerfully die in the midst of his
weeping friends. He had up to this hour been haunted with the
apprehension that his poor old frame might be left to moulder
somewhere in the wide, inhospitable desert that stretched between him
and his roof-tree. Now that dreadful apprehension was banished. The
Lord had remembered his own. Dora would walk beside his beast and
protect him, and the knowledge that she had thus been instrumental in
prolonging her father's life would be her exceeding great reward.

A most enchanting prospect for Dora, was it not? Even she did not put
her neck under the yoke until she had first informed her father of her
momentous secret, and invited him to assume his role in the programme
already mentioned as arranged by her lover and herself. But, as a
matter of course, he scorned the suggestion. Posey begged and raved,
but without avail. The girl never had a question in her mind as to her
duty from the moment she saw her father approaching. She must do as he
said--go back with him as his slave. There was no help for it.

And so the lovers held a hurried consultation, pledged eternal
fidelity and all that, agreed that Posey should go on and make his
fortune, and that when Dora should be released by death from her duty
to her father he should either come back for her or she should go