n up."

"I've only got part of one. I once saved my little girl, and her
picture once saved me."

From an inner pocket Thorn produced a woman's housewife, carefully
untied it, though all its implements were missing but a little
thimble, and from one of its compartments took a flattened bullet and
the remnants of a picture.

"I gave her that the first Christmas after I found her. She wasn't as
tidy about her clothes as I liked to see, and I thought if I gave her
a handy thing like this, she'd be willing to sew. But she only made
one shirt for me, and then got tired, so I keep it like an old fool,
as I am. Yes, that's the bit of lead that would have done for me, if
Mary's likeness hadn't been just where it was."

"You'll like to show her this when you go home, won't you?" said Dick,
as he took up the bullet, while Phil examined the marred picture, and
Thorn poised the little thimble on his big finger, with a sigh.

"How can I, when I don't know where she is, and camp is all the home
I've got!"

The words broke from him like a sudden groan, when some old wound is
rudely touched. Both of the young men started, both laid back the
relics they had taken up, and turned their eyes from Thorn's face,
across which swept a look of shame and sorrow, too significant to be
misunderstood. Their silence assured him of their sympathy, and, as if
that touch of friendliness unlocked his heavy heart, he eased it by
a full confession. When he spoke again, it was with the calmness of
repressed emotion, a calmness more touching to his mates than the most
passionate outbreak, the most pathetic lamentation; for the coarse
camp-phrases seemed to drop from his vocabulary; more than once his
softened voice grew tremulous, and to the words "my little girl,"
there went a tenderness that proved how dear a place she still
retained in that deep heart of his.

"Boys, I've gone so far; I may as well finish; and you'll see I'm not
without some cause for my stern looks and ways; you'll pity me, and
from you I'll take the comfort of it. It's only the old story,--I
married her, worked for her, lived for her, and kept my little girl
like a lady. I should have known that I was too old and sober for a
young thing like that, for the life she led before the pinch came
just suited her. She liked to be admired, to dress and dance and make
herself pretty for all the world to see; not to keep house for a quiet
man like me. Idleness wasn't good for her, it bre