Uncle John had not always lived in the old house.  We knew, that, after Grandpapa’s death, it had been shut up,—­for my father’s business engagements would not allow my mother to reside in it, and Uncle John had been for years among the Indians in the far Northwest.  We had heard of him sometimes, but we had never seen him, we hardly realized that he was a living person, till one day he suddenly appeared among us, rough-looking and uncouth in his hunter’s dress, with his heavy beard and his long hair, bringing with him his multifarious assortment, so charming to our eyes, of buffalo-robes and elk-horns, wolf-skins and Indian moccasins.

He staid with us that winter, and very merry and happy he seemed to us at first;—­looking back upon it now, I should call it, not happiness, but excitement;—­but as the winter passed on, even we children saw that all was not right with him.  He gradually withdrew himself from the constant whirl of society in our house, and, by the spring, had settled himself in the old home at Newport, adding to his old furniture only his books, which he had been all winter collecting, and the primitive inconveniences of his own room, which his rough Western life had rendered indispensable to him.  His study presented a singular mixture of civilization and barbarism, and its very peculiarities made it a delight to Alice and me.  There were a few rare engravings on the walls, hung between enormous antlers which supported rough-looking rifles and uncouth hunting-shirts,—­cases of elegantly bound and valuable books, half hidden by heavy buffalo-robes marked all over with strange-looking hieroglyphics which told the Indian coups,—­study-chairs of the most elaborate manufacture, with levers and screws to incline them to any, the idlest, inclination, over the backs of which hung white wolf-skins, mounted, claws and all, with brilliant red cloth,—­and in the corner, on the pretty Brussels carpet, the prettiest that mamma could find at Shellito’s, lay the bag of Indian weed (Uncle John scorned tobacco) with which he filled his pipe every evening, and the moccasins which he always wore when at home.

In vain did Alice and I spend our eyesight in embroidering slippers for him; our Christmas gifts were received with a kiss or a stroke of the head, and then put into Aunt Molly’s hands to be taken care of, while he still wore the rough moccasins, made far up among the Blackfoot Indians, which he laughingly declared were warmer, cooler, softer, and stronger than any slippers or boots that civilized shoemaker ever turned off his last.