mbats that took place so frequently on the stage within.

During those three months, March saw many things. He saw his old
friends the prairie dogs, and the prong-horned antelopes, and the grisly
bears, and the wolves; more than that, he chased, and shot, and ate many
of them. He also saw clouds of locusts flying high in the air, so thick
that they sometimes darkened the very sky, and herds of buffaloes so
large that they often darkened the whole plain.

During those three months March learned a good deal. He learned that
there was much more of every sort of thing in this world than he had had
any idea of--that there was much, very much, to be thankful for--that
there were many, very many, things to be grieved for, and many also to
be glad about--that the fields of knowledge were inimitably large, and
that his own individual acquirements were preposterously, humblingly
small!

He thought much, too. He thought of the past, present, and future in
quite a surprising way. He thought of his mother and her loneliness, of
Dick and his obstinacy, of Mary and her sweetness, of the Wild Man of
the West and his invisibility. When this latter thought arose, it had
the effect invariably of rousing within him demon Despair; also General
Jollity, for the general had a particular spite against that demon, and,
whenever he showed symptoms of vitality, attacked him with a species of
frenzy that was quite dreadful to feel, and the outward manifestations
of which were such as to cause the trappers to fear seriously that the
poor youth had "gone out of his mind," as they expressed it. But they
were wrong--quite wrong--it was only the natural consequence of those
demons and sprites having gone into his mind, where they were behaving
themselves--as Bounce, when March made him his confidant, said--with
"horrible obstropolosity."

Well, as we have said, March was seated on a low stool, looking up in
his mother's face. He had already been three days at home, and, during
every spare minute he had he sat himself down on the same stool, and
went on with his interminable narrations of the extraordinary adventures
through which he had passed while among the Rocky Mountains and out upon
the great prairies.

Widow Marston--for she knew that she was a widow now, though the
knowledge added but little to the feeling of widowhood to which she had
been doomed for so many years--widow Marston, we say, listened to this
interminable narration with