the last meat's
smoked enough."

"Very well, then. You shall have every basketful of them for your own
fire."

"If you can keep them from the negroes: negroes love chips."

"I'll save them while I chop. You shall have them, if I have to catch
them as they fly."

His hunger had been satisfied: his spirits began to rise.

"Mother, are you going to eat that piece of biscuit? If not, just hand
it over to me, please."

She looked dryly down at the bread in her fingers: humor was denied
her--that playfulness of purest reason.

David had commenced to collect a plateful of scraps--the most
appetizing of the morsels that he himself had not devoured. He rose and
went out into the porch to the dog.

"Now, mother," he said, reentering; and with quiet dignity he preceded
her into the room adjoining.

His father sat on one side of the fireplace, watching the open door for
the entrance of his son. He appeared slightly bent over in his chair.
Plainly the days of rough farm-work and exposure were over for him,
prematurely aged and housed. There was about him--about the shape and
carriage of the head--in the expression of the eye most of all,
perhaps,--the not wholly obliterated markings of a thoughtful and
powerful breed of men. His appearance suggested that some explanation
of David might be traceable in this quarter. For while we know nothing
of these deep things, nor ever shall, in the sense that we can supply
the proofs of what we conjecture; while Nature goes ever about her
ancient work, and we cannot declare that we have ever watched the
operations of her fingers, think on we will, and reason we must, amid
her otherwise intolerable mysteries. Though we accomplish no more in
our philosophy than the poor insect, which momentarily illumines its
wandering through the illimitable night by a flash from its own body.

Lost in obscurity, then, as was David's relation to his mother, there
seemed some gleams of light discernible in that between father and son.
For there are men whom nature seems to make use of to connect their own
offspring not with themselves but with earlier sires. They are like
sluggish canals running between far-separated oceans--from the deeps of
life to the deeps of life, allowing the freighted ships to pass. And no
more does the stream understand what moves across its surface than do
such commonplace agents comprehend the sons who have sprung from their
own loins. Here, too, is one of Nature's greatest