re.

"O Mammy, O Tige," sobbed the boy when safe at last in the woods, and
he threw himself down in an agony of weeping beside the rock where the
old dog lay buried. When calm at last, he took up his bundle of bread
and bacon wrapped about with his fox skin, and started slowly away. He
took no thought as to direction, he was simply "goin'," as his mother
had told him. A dismal rain soon set in, but on and on he persistently
tramped all the long day, water dripping from his ragged trousers and
old hat as he went farther and farther away from all he had ever
known. He met no one, saw no habitation anywhere, only the startled
denizens of the wood scurrying here and there out of his path. Over
mountains and across ravines he went on and on. He was puzzled and
discouraged when night dropped down, and his aching feet and tired
legs said he must have travelled many miles. "Shorely I'll git thar
to-morrer," he said, as he lay down upon his fox skin, but another
weary day of tramping over unknown ways without sight of any human
being brought terror to his sturdy heart and when he lay down alone at
night he felt that he was the only human being in the universe. Oh, if
he only had Tige!

All the people he had known and those he expected to see beyond the
mountains seemed to have sunk into some great unseen abyss. He could
never find his way back to the old cabin, he knew, and he began to
feel that he could never reach forward to the wonderful city of which
he had dreamed. In the agony of loneliness and the chill of night
which settled upon him he cried again, "O Tige, O Mammy!" Did the
tender mother-arms reach down and draw her boy near to the heart of
God? At any rate he grew quiet. He remembered vaguely that he had
heard how God is everywhere, and with a new strange sense of
companionship with the great Creator, which comes to souls in
extremity, he fell asleep and did not waken until the sun, bursting
forth with new brilliance after the day of rain, had lit up the
mountain tops and set the birds to singing.

He enjoyed the breakfast of very hard corn pone and bacon, and took
out his beloved watch. The busy, little shining thing, which he never
forgot to wind, did not mean much to him as a marker of time, for he
knew little about the hours as enumerated by the watch, but it was on
this morning of new courage a fresh pledge of wonderful things
awaiting him. He started on again with steady strides, and tramped
bravely till mid