Perhaps, as the years went by, the prospect of a reunion became more of a dream than an expectation.  Davie had married very happily, a simple little body, not unlike himself, both in person and disposition.  They had one son, who, of course, had been called Alexander, and in whom Davie fondly insisted, the lost Sandy’s beauty and merits were faithfully reproduced.

It is needless to say the boy was extravagantly loved and spoiled.  Whatever Davie’s youth had missed, he strove to procure for “Little Sandy.”  Many an extra hour he worked for this unselfish end.  Life itself became to him only an implement with which to toil for his boy’s pleasure and advantage.  It was a common-place existence enough, and yet through it ran one golden thread of romance.

In the summer evenings, when they walked together on the Battery, and in winter nights, when they sat together by the stove, Davie talked to his wife and child of that wonderful brother, who had gone to look for fortune in the great West.  The simplicity of the elder two and the enthusiasm of the youth equally accepted the tale.

Somehow, through many a year, a belief in his return invested life with a glorious possibility.  Any night they might come home and find Uncle Sandy sitting by the fire, with his pockets full of gold eagles, and no end of them in some safe bank, besides.

But when the youth had finished his schooldays, had learned a trade and began to go sweethearting, more tangible hopes and dreams agitated all their hearts; for young Sandy Morrison opened a carpenter’s shop in his own name, and began to talk of taking a wife and furnishing a home.

He did not take just the wife that pleased his father and mother.  There was nothing, indeed, about Sallie Barker of which they could complain.  She was bright and capable, but they felt a want they were not able to analyze; the want was that pure unselfishness which was the ruling spirit of their own lives.

This want never could be supplied in Sallie’s nature.  She did right because it was her duty to do right, not because it gave her pleasure to do it.  When they had been married three years the war broke out, and soon afterward Alexander Morrison was drafted for the army.  Sallie, who was daily expecting her second child, refused all consolation; and, indeed, their case looked hard enough.

At first the possibility of a substitute had suggested itself; but a family consultation soon showed that this was impossible without hopelessly straitening both houses.  Everyone knows that dreary silence which follows a long discussion, that has only confirmed the fear of an irremediable misfortune.  Davie broke it in this case in a very unexpected manner.

“Let me go in your place, Sandy.  I’d like to do it, my lad.  Maybe I’d find your uncle.  Who knows?  What do you say, old wife?  We’ve had more than twenty years together.  It is pretty hard for Sandy and Sallie, now, isn’t it?”