the house, making every loose
board he trod on a speaking witness to the joy of his heart. "Actions
speak louder than words," so they say; and yet it does so happen
sometimes, but very rarely, mind you, that what they say is a good deal
louder than what they do. At sight of the young hunter, Pow-wow had cut
short his antics, or, rather, was made to cut them short--the Manitou
inspiration, to which they had been due, departing from him as suddenly
as it had entered; and subsiding to his haunches, he became in an
instant as quiet and solemn as a tumbler between cues. In the joy of the
moment, Ben had forgotten to leave his rifle at the door, and now, with
it in his left hand rested on the floor, he stood by the bedside of his
strangely fated little friend, a heroic smell of gunpowder and buckskin
boisterous in the air about him, and on his face a look of benignant
wonderment, as he gazed down into the newly reopened eyes, whose light
had so well nigh been lost in the shadows of death. Bright and clear as
were the eyes turned up to his own, they were still hardly capable of
more than a dreamy perception of what they looked on. Taking the little
hand, so white and wan, in his own huge, powder-begrimed paw, and
shaking it gently from side to side, in a wag-tail way, Ben, after some
moments of silence, said:

"Howd'y do, Sprigg?"

"My name is Sprigg, then, sure enough?"

"If it isn't I don't know the man I'm talking to; never did--stranger to
me."

"And is your name Ben Logan?"

"If it isn't I don't know the man that's talking to you; never
did--stranger to me."

"And these two pretty people here, are they my father and mother,
really, now?"

"If they ain't so now, they never were so and never will be so, in this
world." Delivered with much solemnity and some stress on "now" and
"this."

"And this place, where we all are, is it really grandpap's house, and no
mistake?"

"If it isn't you can't prove it by me. It's just where I left just such
a house this morning, though it doesn't look much like the same place,
either, with you wide awake in it, and old Pow-wow on his hind legs in
it, and both so jolly."

"And that little girl there, at the foot of my bed, is her name
Bertha?"

Here Ben paused before answering, regarding the person referred to with
a look of some perplexity. "Well, she used to answer to that name, but
here lately she don't answer to any when I call her; goes about like one
in a traveling dream