was still tight in the bottle, the jug brimming with clear
water from our spring. He had himself fetched them from the pantry, it
seemed, and was now awaiting, with genial patience, the arrival of
company to give an air of conviviality to the evening's indulgence. I
caught him in a smiling muse, his eye on the tip of his wooden leg; he
was sailed, it seemed, to a clime of feeling far off from the stress
out of which I had come. There was no question: I was not interrogated
upon the lapse of the crew, as he called John Cather and Judy and me,
from the politeness of attendance at dinner, which, indeed, he seemed
to have forgotten in a train of agreeable recollections. He was in a
humor as serene and cheerfully voluble as ever I met with in my life;
and when he had bade me join him at the table to pour his first dram,
he fell to on the narrative of some adventure, humorously occurring,
off the Funks, long, long ago, in the days of his boyhood. I did not
attend, nor did I pour the dram: being for the time deeply occupied
with reflections upon the square, black bottle on the table before
me--the cure of moods my uncle had ever maintained it would work.

I got up resolved.

"Where you goin', Dannie?" says my uncle, his voice all at once vacant
of cheerfulness.

"To the pantry, sir," I answered.

"Ah!" says he. "Is it ginger-ale, Dannie?"

"No, sir."

"That's good," says he, blankly; "that's very good. For Judy," he
added, "is fell into the habit o' tipplin' by day, an' the ginger-ale
is all runned out."

I persevered on my way to the pantry.

"Dannie!" he called.

I turned.

"Is you quite sure, lad," he asked, with an anxious rubbing of his
stubble of gray beard, "that 'tisn't ginger-ale?"

"I'm wanting a glass, sir," I replied, testily. "I see but one on the
table."

"Ah!" he ejaculated. "A glass!"

I returned with the glass.

"Dannie," says my uncle, feigning a relief he dared not entertain,
"you was wantin' a drop o' water, wasn't you?" He pushed the little
brown jug towards me. "I _'lowed_ 'twas water," says he, hopefully,
"when you up an' spoke about gettin' a glass from the pantry." He
urged the jug in my direction. "Ay," he repeated, not hopefully now
at all, but in a whisper more like despair, "I jus' _'lowed_ 'twas a
drop o' water."

The jug remained in its place.

"Dannie," he entreated, with a thick forefinger still urging the jug
on its course, "you is thirsty, I _knows_ you is!"

I would