g to
git well agin, arter being shot by Injen's pizen bullets,[3] is enough
to pay us twenty times over--Eh! Ella, child--don't you say so?"

"No one, save the gentleman himself, or his dearest friends, can be more
rejoiced at his favorable symptoms than myself," responded Ella,
timidly, in a voice so low, sweet and touching, that Reynolds, who heard
without seeing her--for she kept the rude curtain of skins between
them--felt his heart beat strangely, while his eyes involuntarily grew
moist.

"That's truly said, gal--truly said, I do believe," rejoined Mrs.
Younker; "for she's hung over you, sir, (turning to the wounded man)
night and day, like a mother over her child, until we've had to use
right smart authority to make her go to bed, for fear as how she'd be
sick too."

"And if I live," answered Reynolds, in a voice that trembled with
emotion, "and it is ever in my power to repay such disinterested
attention and kindness, I will do it, even to the sacrificing that life
which she, together with you and your family, good woman, has been the
means, under God, of preserving."

"Under God," repeated the matron; "that's true; I like the way you said
that, stranger; it sounds reverential--it's just--and it raises my
respect for you a good deal; for all our doings is under God's permit;"
and she turned her eyes upward, with a devout look, in which position
she remained several seconds; while Ella, with her fair hands clasped,
followed her example, and seemed, with her moving lips, engaged in
prayer.

"But come," resumed the dame, "it won't do for you, stranger, to be
disturbed too much jest now; for you arn't any too strong, I reckon; and
so you'll jest take my advice, and go to sleep awhile, and you'll feel
all the better for't agin Ben and Isaac come home, which'll be in two or
three hours."

Saying this, Mrs. Younker again disposed the curtains so as to conceal
from Reynolds all external objects; and, together with Ella, withdrew,
leaving him to repose. Whether he profited by her advice immediately, or
whether he meditated for some time on other matters, not excluding Ella,
we shall leave to the imagination of the reader; while we proceed, by
way of episode, to give a general, though brief account, of the Younker
family.

Benjamin Younker was a man about fifty-five years of age--tall,
raw-boned and very muscular--and although now past the prime, even the
meridian of life, was still possessed of uncommon strength