o had been so thin, soon grew so fat and chubby that some
one named him "Stumps." There was no good trying to get rid of that
name. He looked as though his name ought to be Stumps, and Stumps it
was, in spite of the persistent efforts of old Forty-nine to keep the
name in use which he had given him. And this was all that Forty-nine or
any one could tell of these two children.

And now, how beautiful Carrie had grown by the time the leaves turned
brown! Often Dosson saw her hovering about the cabin of old Forty-nine,
flitting through the woods with her brother, or walking leisurely with
Logan on the hill down the dim old Indian trail.

Mother Nature has her golden wedding once a year, and all the world is
invited. She has many gala days, too, besides, and she celebrates them
with songs and dances of delight. In the full bosomed, teeming, jocund
Spring, I have seen the trees lean together and rustle their leaves in
whisperings of love. I have seen them reach their long strong arms to
each other, and intertwine them as if in fond affection, as the bland,
warm winds, coming up from the South, blew over them and warmed their
hearts of oak--old trees, too, gnarled and knotted--old fellows that had
bobbed their heads together through many and many a Spring; that had
leaned their lofty and storm-stained tops together through many and many
a Winter; that had stood, like mighty soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, in
friendships knit through many centuries. The birds sing and flutter, fly
in and out of the dark deep canopies of green, build nests, and make
love in myriads. How the squirrels run and chatter and frisk, and fly
from branch to branch, with their bushy tails tossing in the warm wind!
Under foot, ten thousand tall strange flowers and weeds and long
spindled grasses grow, and reach up and up, as if to try to touch the
sunlight above the tops of the oak and ash and pine and fir and cedar
and maple and cherry and sycamore and spruce and tamarack, and all these
that grow in common confusion here and shut out the sun from the earth
as perfectly as if all things dwelt forever in cloudland.

The cabin of old Forty-nine was very modest; it hid away in the canyon
as if it did not wish to be seen at all. And it was right; for verily it
was scarcely presentable. It was an old cabin, too, almost as old as
little "Carats," if indeed any one could tell how old she was. But it,
unlike herself, seemed to be growing tired and weary of the