, lad, if ye mean to mount and ride wi' me to-morrow, you'll
ha' to eat heartier than that."

"I'm doing my best. Did you say it was _you_ that shot the moose deer,
Mary?"

"Yes, it was me. Me go out to kill bird for make dinner, two days back,
an' see the moose in one place where hims no can escape but by one way--
narrow way, tree feets, not more, wide. Hims look to me--me's look to
him. Then me climb up side of rocks so hims no touch me, but _must_
pass below me quite near. Then me yell--horbuble yell!" ("Ha!" thought
March, "music, sweetest music, that yell!") "an' hims run round in great
fright!" ("Oh, the blockhead," thought March)--"but see hims no can git
away, so hims rush past me! Me shoot in back of hims head, an' him
drop."

"Huzza!" shouted Dick, in such a bass roar that March involuntarily
started. "Well done, lass; ye'll make a splendid wife to a bold
mountaineer."

March could not believe his eyes, while he looked at the modest little
creature who thus coolly related the way in which she slaughtered the
moose; but he was bound to believe his ears, for Mary _said_ she did the
deed, and to suppose it possible that Mary could tell a falsehood was,
in March's opinion, more absurd than to suppose that the bright sun
could change itself into melted butter! But Dick's enthusiastic
reference to Mary one day becoming the wife of a mountaineer startled
him. He felt that, in the event of such a calamitous circumstance
happening, she could no longer be his sister, and the thought made him
first fierce, and then sulky.

"D'ye kill many mountain sheep here, Dick?" inquired March, when his
ruffled temper had been smoothed down with another marrow-bone.

"Ay, lots of 'em."

"What like are they close? I've never been nearer to 'em yet than a
thousand yards or so--never within range."

"They're 'bout the size of a settlement sheep, an' skin somethin' like
the red deer; ye've seen the red deer, of coorse, March?"

"Yes, often; shot 'em too."

"Well, like them; but they've got most treemendous horns. I shot one
last week with horns three fut six inches long; there they lie now in
that corner. Are ye a good shot, March?"

"Middlin'."

"D'ye smoke?"

"Yes, a little; but I an't a slave to it like some."

"Humph!" ejaculated Dick sarcastically. "If ye smoke `a little,' how
d'ye know but ye may come to smoke much, an' be a slave to it like other
men? Ye may run down a steep hill, an' say, when