said Sarah. But the
Virginian's letter was sent to Dunbarton, where the old lady sat herself
down to read it with much attention.

Here is what the Virginian had said to the unknown mother of his
sweetheart.

MRS. JOHN STARK WOOD Bennington, Vermont.

Madam: If your daughter Miss Wood has ever told you about her saving
a man's life here when some Indians had shot him that is the man who
writes to you now. I don't think she can have told you right about
that affair for she is the only one in this country who thinks it was
a little thing. So I must tell you it, the main points. Such an action
would have been thought highly of in a Western girl, but with Miss
Wood's raising nobody had a right to expect it.

"Indeed!" snorted the great-aunt. "Well, he would be right, if I had not
had a good deal more to do with her 'raising' than ever Lizzie had." And
she went on with the letter.

I was starting in to die when she found me. I did not know anything
then, and she pulled me back from where I was half in the next world.
She did not know but what Indians would get her too but I could not make
her leave me. I am a heavy man one hundred and seventy-three stripped
when in full health. She lifted me herself from the ground me helping
scarce any for there was not much help in me that day. She washed my
wound and brought me to with her own whiskey. Before she could get me
home I was out of my head but she kept me on my horse somehow and talked
wisely to me so I minded her and did not go clean crazy till she had got
me safe to bed. The doctor says I would have died all the same if she
had not nursed me the way she did. It made me love her more which I did
not know I could. But there is no end, for this writing it down makes me
love her more as I write it.

And now Mrs. Wood I am sorry this will be bad news for you to hear. I
know you would never choose such a man as I am for her for I have got
no education and must write humble against my birth. I wish I could make
the news easier but truth is the best.

I am of old stock in Virginia. English and one Scotch Irish grandmother
my father's father brought from Kentucky. We have always stayed at the
same place farmers and hunters not bettering our lot and very plain. We
have fought when we got the chance, under Old Hickory and in Mexico and
my father and two brothers were killed in the Valley sixty-four. Always
with us one son has been apt to run away and I was the one this time. I