into an awful snowstorm, an’ one thing another, an’ I lost twelve or fifteen hours.  It seemed to me that them two days was longer ’n my hull life, but I fin’ly did git home about nine o’clock in the mornin’.  When I got to the house Mis’ Jones was on the lookout fer me, an’ the door opened as I run up the stoop, an’ I see by her face that I was too late.  ’Oh, David, David!’ she says (she’d never called me David before), puttin’ her hands on my shoulders.

“‘When?’ I says.

“‘’Bout midnight,’ she says.

“‘Did he suffer much?’ I says.

“‘No,’ she says, ’I don’t think so; but he was out of his head most of the time after the fust day, an’ I guess all the time the last twenty-four hours.’

“’Do you think he’d ‘a’ knowed me?’ I says.  ‘Did he say anythin’?’ an’ at that,” said David, “she looked at me.  She wa’n’t cryin’ when I come in, though she had ben; but at that her face all broke up.  ’I don’t know,’ she says.  ‘He kept sayin’ things, an’ ’bout all we could understand was “Daddy, daddy,"’ an’ then she throwed her apern over her face, an’——­”

David tipped his hat a little farther over his eyes, though, like many if not most “horsey” men, he usually wore it rather far down, and leaning over, twirled the whip in the socket between his two fingers and thumb.  John studied the stitched ornamentation of the dashboard until the reins were pushed into his hands.  But it was not for long.  David straightened himself, and, without turning his head, resumed them as if that were a matter of course.

“Day after the fun’ral,” he went on, “I says to Mis’ Jones, ‘I’m goin’ back out West,’ I says, ‘an’ I can’t say how long I shall be gone—­long enough, anyway,’ I says, ’to git it into my head that when I come back the’ won’t be no little feller to jump up an’ ’round my neck when I come into the house; but, long or short, I’ll come back some time, an’ meanwhile, as fur ‘s things between you an’ me air, they’re to go on jest the same, an’ more ‘n that, do you think you’ll remember him some?’ I says.

“‘As long as I live,’ she says, ‘jest like my own.’

“‘Wa’al,’ I says, ’long ‘s you remember him, he’ll be, in a way, livin’ to ye, an’ as long ‘s that I allow to pay fer his keep an’ tendin’ jest the same as I have, an’,’ I says, ’if you don’t let me you ain’t no friend o’ mine, an’ you ben a good one.’  Wa’al, she squimmidged some, but I wouldn’t let her say ‘No.’  ’I’ve ’ranged it all with my pardner an’ other ways,’ I says, ‘an’ more ’n that, if you git into any kind of a scrape an’ I don’t happen to be got at, you go to him an’ git what you want.’”

“I hope she lived and prospered,” said John fervently.

“She lived twenty year,” said David, “an’ I wish she was livin’ now.  I never drawed a check on her account without feelin’ ‘t I was doin’ somethin’ for my little boy.