ieces of gold and silver at the bottom.

'Hain't never hed no use fer it,' he said as he drew out a layer
of greenbacks and spread them with trembling fingers. Then he began
counting them slowly and carefully.

'There!' he whispered, when at length he had counted a hundred dollars.
'There Hope! take thet an' put it away in yer wallet. Might come handy
when ye're 'way fr'm hum.'

She kissed him tenderly.

'Put it 'n yer wallet an' say nothin'--not a word t' nobody,' he said.

Then he counted over a like amount for me.

'Say nothin',' he said, looking up at me over his spectacles. 'Ye'll hev
t' spile a suit o' clothes purty often if them fellers keep a fightin'
uv ye all the time.'

Father and mother were coming in below stairs and, hearing them, we
helped Uncle Eb tie up his bundle and stow it away. Then we went down to
meet them.

Next morning we bade Hope goodbye at the cars and returned to our home
with a sense of loss that, for long, lay heavy upon us all.

Chapter 27

Uncle Eb and David were away buying cattle, half the week, but Elizabeth
Brower was always at home to look after my comfort. She was up betimes
in the morning and singing at her work long before I was out of bed.
When the breakfast was near ready she came to my door with a call so
fall of cheerfulness and good-nature it was the best thing in the day.
And often, at night, I have known her to come into my room when I was
lying awake with some hard problem, to see that I was properly covered
or that my window was not open too far. As we sat alone together, of
an evening, I have seen her listen for hours while I was committing the
Odes of Horace with a curiosity that finally gave way to resignation.
Sometimes she would look over my shoulder at the printed page and try to
discern some meaning in it when Uncle Eb was with us he would often sit
a long time his head turned attentively as the lines came rattling off
my tongue.

'Cur'us talk!' he said, one evening, as I paused a moment, while he
crossed the room for a drink of water. 'Don' seem t' make no kind O'
sense. I can make out a word here 'n there but fer good, sound, common
sense I call it a purty thin crop.'

Hope wrote me every week for a time. A church choir had offered her a
place soon after she went to the big city. She came home intending to
surprise us all, the first summer but unfortunately, I had gone away in
the woods with a party of surveyors and missed her. We were a month