Grumps was everywhere all day.  Nobody, almost, escaped trampling on part of him.  He tumbled over everything, into everything, and against everything.  He knocked himself, singed himself, and scalded himself, and in fact forgot himself altogether; and when, late that night, Crusoe went with Dick into his mother’s cottage, and the door was shut, Grumps stretched his ruffled, battered, ill-used, and dishevelled little body down on the door-step, thrust his nose against the opening below the door, and lay in humble contentment all night, for he knew that Crusoe was there.

Of course such an occasion could not pass without a shooting-match.  Rifles were brought out after the feast was over, just before the sun went down into its bed on the western prairies, and “the nail” was soon surrounded by bullets, tipped by Joe Blunt and Jim Scraggs, and of course driven home by Dick Varley, whose “silver rifle” had now become in its owner’s hand a never-failing weapon.  Races, too, were started, and here again Dick stood pre-eminent; and when night spread her dark mantle over the scene, the two best fiddlers in the settlement were placed on empty beer-casks, and some danced by the light of the monster fires, while others listened to Joe Blunt as he recounted their adventures on the prairies and among the Rocky Mountains.

There were sweethearts, and wives, and lovers at the feast, but we question if any heart there was so full of love, and admiration, and gratitude, as that of the Widow Varley as she watched her son Dick throughout that merry evening.

* * * * *

Years rolled by, and the Mustang Valley prospered.  Missionaries went there, and a little church was built, and to the blessings of a fertile land were added the far greater blessings of Christian light and knowledge.  One sad blow fell on the Widow Varley’s heart.  Her only brother, Daniel Hood, was murdered by the Indians.  Deeply and long she mourned, and it required all Dick’s efforts and those of the pastor of the settlement to comfort her.  But from the first the widow’s heart was sustained by the loving Hand that dealt the blow, and when time blunted the keen edge of her feelings her face became as sweet and mild, though not so lightsome, as before.

Joe Blunt and Henri became leading men in the councils of the Mustang Valley; but Dick Varley preferred the woods, although, as long as his mother lived, he hovered round her cottage—­going off sometimes for a day, sometimes for a week, but never longer.  After her head was laid in the dust, Dick took altogether to the woods, with Crusoe and Charlie, the wild horse, as his only companions, and his mother’s Bible in the breast of his hunting-shirt.  And soon Dick, the bold hunter, and his dog Crusoe became renowned in the frontier settlements from the banks of the Yellowstone River to the Gulf of Mexico.