d unhappy, and
after bringing in the wood for the breakfast fire, and feeding the
pigs, he went up the rude ladder to his straw bed on the floor.

It was scanty fare that the Jones family had. You could see that by
their looks. It is true that they were healthy and strong; but they
lacked the fair, plump development that plenty of food of a suitable
variety gives to childhood and youth. Of vegetables they were not
destitute; potatoes, corn, beans, and pumpkins they had in abundance
since fall set in, if not before. Bread, milk, and meat were usually
scarce with them. For the latter they depended principally on the
father's rifle; but as he was apt to take wide and eccentric tramps
over the prairies, there would be long intervals when but little game
from his gun made savory the family cooking.

Mr. Jones had been away for some days now, and his patient wife had
really suffered for food. Vegetables of the same kind, served up
pretty much in the same way, with little to give relish to them, a big
crying infant the while tugging at her breast, and the house-work to
do, it is not strange that while the children, fresh from romping in
the bracing prairie air, were favored with a ravenous appetite, she
had little. Tom understood all this; for, constituted like her, he,
too, felt the deprivations of the table, although in a less degree,
and much did he worry about her meagre diet.

"Ah," he thought, as he lay down for the night, "when I am away and
earning, won't I send the good things to mother!"

CHAPTER II.

SHOOTING DOUBLE.--A FRONTIER DOCTOR.

Tom slept soundly, and notwithstanding he charged his memory to awaken
him before daybreak, dawn was brightening the east while he was still
in the shadowy land of dreams. The low attic had no window, save a
pane of glass nailed over a hole under the eaves; and long the lad
might have slumbered on, had not a loud sound suddenly aroused him.

"Does it thunder?" he exclaimed, fearing a prairie tempest had arisen
to interfere with his cherished project of leaving home.

Peering through the window pane, he saw, to his surprise, that the
morning was cloudless. What could it mean? Assuredly he had heard the
rolling of thunder! He looked out again, for another and more
agreeable thought had struck him.

"Yes, it's the hens!" he ejaculated; "my! what a heap of them!"

By "the hens," he meant prairie hens; for in this familiar way they
are spoken of at the west. They had