ter. But the rocks was too close
to the surface fer comfortable swimmin'. The Jenkinses found him down
in the slack water, Sunday noon or thereabouts, and they sed he'd never
be no deader, not even if he'd a-died in a reg'lar bed, with a doctor
helpin' him along."

Caleb threw his sister one lugubriously helpless glance. Sarah had
choked, apparently upon a crumb of bread, and was coughing,
stranglingly. And Caleb made to change the drift of the conversation,
but he was not quick enough.

"I ain't never been much of a hand for licker," Steve finished naively.
"Old Tom sed he never could understand it in me, neither, but he
reckoned it was lucky in a way fer both of us. He sed he'd whale the
life outen me if he ever caught me even smellin' of a cork; and as fer
him--well, it come in handy for him, havin' a sober hand round the
shack when he wan't quite hisself!"

This time when Caleb lifted his eyes he met a startled gleam behind
Sarah's half dropped lashes. She was peering steadily into the boy's
lean, untroubled face. Caleb voiced the query which he knew must be
behind her quiet intentness.

"You said your name was O'Mara, I believe. I suppose that was--ah--Old
Tom's last name, too?"

Steve laughed; he laughed frankly for the first time since he had
halted, hours before, outside in the dusty road.

"Why, Old Tom had a dozen different names in the last few years," he
replied. "He had a new one every time he went outen the woods fer a
trip. But he always sed he mostly favored Brown or Jones or Smith,
they bein' quiet and common and not too hard to remember. He just
changed names whenever he got tired of his old one, Old Tom did. But
he always did say, too, that if he'd hed as good a one as O'Mara, he'd
a kept it--and kept it proud."

At the conclusion of that statement it was Miss Sarah's gaze which went
searching across the table for her brother's eyes. But the boy just
ran on and on, totally oblivious to their glances.

He told them of his lonely days in the woods shack, when Old Tom went
down river and was three or four weeks in returning; he dwelt upon
blissful days in the spring when he had been allowed to play a man's
part in the small drives which he and Old Tom and the "Jenkinses"
began, and which Old Tom and the Jenkinses alone saw through to market
in Morrison. He touched lightly and inconsequentially upon certain
days when Old Tom would hang for hours over an old tin box filled with
soi