untiring patience and unmitigated pleasure.
There was as yet no symptom of the narrative drawing to a close, neither
was there the slightest evidence of the widow Marston becoming wearied.
We have seen a cat worried and pulled and poked by its kitten almost
beyond endurance, and we have observed that the cat endured it meekly--
nay, evidently rejoiced in the annoyance: it was pleasurable pain. As
it is with feline, so is it with human mothers. Their love overbears
and outweighs _everything_. Ah! good cause have the rugged males of
this world to rejoice that such is the fact; and although they know it
well, we hold that it is calculated to improve the health and refresh
the spirit of men to have that fact brought prominently and pointedly to
their remembrance!

Had March Marston talked the most unutterable balderdash, widow Marston
would have listened with unwearied delight as long, we believe, as her
eyes and ears could do their duty. But March did _not_ talk balderdash.
For a madman, he spoke a great deal of common, besides a considerable
amount of uncommon sense, and his mother listened with intelligent
interest: commenting on what he said in her quiet way, as she found
opportunity--we say this advisedly, for opportunities were not so
frequent as one might suppose. March had always been possessed of a
glib tongue, and he seemed, as Bounce remarked, to have oiled the hinges
since his return to Pine Point settlement.

"Mother," said March, after a short pause that had succeeded an
unusually long burst, "do you know it's only a few months since I left
you to go to this trip to the mountains?"

"I know it well, my son," replied the widow, smiling at the question.

"And do you know," he continued, "that it seems to me more like five
years? When I think of all that I've heard and all that I've done, and
all that I've seen, it seems to me as if it had took--as if it _must_
have took--five years to have heard and done and seen it all in?"

"And yet," said the widow musingly, "you failed to see the Wild Man o'
the West after all."

"Mother, I'll be angry with you if you say that again."

"Well, I won't," she replied, taking his hand in hers and stroking it.
"Tell me again, March, about Dick of the Cave and his little girl. I
like to hear about them; they were so kind to you, and that Dick, from
your account, seems to be such a fine fellow: tell me all about them
over again."

"I will, mother," said March, clea