“Great troubles, and they are not ended yet.  I should be very wretched, but for you and your dear parents.  You are but a child, and yet it would comfort me to tell you that I love your uncle with a love that can never die.  And so when I ask you about him you will tell me everything you know, will you not?  And remember that in doing so you are helping to make happy a poor heart that carries heavy burdens.  There, that will do.  I have told you more, perhaps, than I ought; but although you are young, I am sure that you are brave and true.  And so, if there is any story about your uncle which you have never told me, let me hear it now.  And if there is not, tell me one that you have told me over and over again.”

“Did I ever tell thee how he saved a little lamb from drowning?”

“No! did he do that?”

“Yes, he did!  Thee knows that when the snow melts, this little brook swells up into a great river and sometimes it happens so suddenly that even the grown people are scared.  It did that day, and came just pouring out of those woods and through the meadow where our old Maisie was playing with two little lambs.  One of them was bounding around her, and it slipped over the edge of the bank and fell into the bed of the creek.  It wasn’t a very high bank, you know; but the lamb was little, and it just stood bleating in the bed, and its mother stood bleating on the bank.  Well, Uncle David heard them and started to see what was the matter, and though the rain had begun to fall, he ran across the field as hard as he could.  But by the time he reached the place the flood caught up the little lamb and rolled it over and over like a ball.  Uncle Dave didn’t even wait to take off his coat, but plunged right into that water, boiling like a soap kettle, and swam out and grabbed that little lamb and hung to it until he landed down there on a high bank a quarter of a mile away.  What does thee think of that, Pepeeta?”

Her eyes kindled; pride swelled in her heart, and her spirits rose with that wild feeling of joy with which women always hear of the bold deeds of those they love.

“How beautiful and noble he is,” she cried.

“And strong!” added the boy, to whose youthful imagination physical prowess was still the greatest grace of life.  And as he said it they reached a little rivulet so swollen by the spring rains as to be a formidable obstacle to their progress.  Steven had not considered it in laying out their route and stood before it in dismay.

“How is thee ever going to get across?” he asked, and then under the impulse of a sudden inspiration rushed to the fence, took off the top rail and hurrying to the side of the brook flung it across for a bridge, with all the gallantry of a Sir Walter Raleigh.

But the spirits of his companion were too high to accept of aid!  The strength of her lover had communicated itself to her, and with a light, free bound, she leaped to the other side.