ent before me.

Mr. Mellowtone finished the prayer, and we lowered the rude coffin into
the grave. Not one of us spoke a word, and there was no sound to be
heard but the crackling of the fires, and the sobs I tried in vain to
repress. I was unutterably sad and lonely. I felt that no one on the
broad earth could take the place of Matt, and be to me what he had
been. The current of existence seemed to have come to a sudden stop,
and in my thought I could not make it move again.

My companions filled up the grave, and I watched the operation with a
swelling heart. I saw them place the sods on the mound they had heaped
up, and more than before I realized that I was never again to behold
the face from which had beamed upon me, for ten long years, so much of
love and joy. I thought of the old man pressing me as a little child to
his heart on the banks of the Missouri, when he had saved me from the
cold and the waters. I considered the days, months, and years of care
and devotion he had bestowed upon me--upon me, who had not a single
natural claim upon his love.

"Come, boy, don't stand there any longer," said Kit Cruncher, calling
to me from the vicinity of the block house. "You may git shot."

I turned, and found that my companions had left me alone. I joined
them, and with an effort repressed the flowing tears. I tried to
realize that I was still living, and that there was a future before me.

"I know you feel bad, boy; but 'tain't no use to cry," said Kit. "We'll
take good care on you."

"Matt has been very good to me," I replied.

"That's truer'n you know on, boy. Many's the time he sot up all night
with you when you was sick, and held you in his arms all day. I've been
twenty miles to the fort in the dead o' winter myself to git some
medicine for you. If Matt hed been a woman, he moughtn't have nussed
you any better."

"I'm very grateful to him, and to you."

"I know you be, boy. You took good care of old Matt when he was down
with the rheumatiz. You've been a good boy, and I don't blame you much
for cryin' now the old man's dead and gone. I think we will have
sunthin' to eat now."

I went to the Castle, and prepared a supper of fried bacon and
johnny-cake, which I carried to the block house. My companions ate as
though life had no sorrows; but we had all worked very hard in the
construction of our fortress, and the circumstances did not favor the
development of much fine sentiment. I carried the supper thing