The mingled expression of heart-felt delight, surprise, and consternation that pervaded the features of Rich, when, upon turning, he looked Morton in the face, was quite ludicrous.

"Mort!" he gasped.

"Yes, Mort," replied his visitor, grasping fervently the hand that was timidly extended to meet his own; "ain't you glad to see me?"

"Glad!" shouted Rich, grasping both the hands of Morton in his own, while the tears ran down his cheeks; "I hope you don't think I am not; but—"

"But you are in a working dress, and not in a state to receive me, who never cleaned out the president's barn, milked his cow, or dug his potatoes, and you are smutty."

Thus saying, Morton rubbed his hand on the top of the bellows, and made an awful smut spot across the whole side of his face.

"Will that remove your scruples, old chum? How are you?"

[Pg 114]

"O, Mort, I'm so glad to see you!"

"Expected you'd be; that's what I came for; didn't come for anything else; 'kalkerlated,' as Uncle Tim would say, to make you glad."

Rich now introduced Morton to his father and uncle, who received him without any of the embarrassment that had overwhelmed Rich, and in a most hearty manner.

"You must excuse, Mr. Morton," said Clement, "my son's constraint upon first seeing you; it was occasioned by the recollection of the change in our circumstances, in consequence of which he cannot entertain as he would wish the friend he loves so dearly, and whom we have all learned through him to love, even before meeting. If we have been unfortunate, it is no more than has overtaken more deserving persons than ourselves, and our losses have neither chilled our hearts nor discouraged us from effort."

"We think," said Robert, "that as we earned all we have lost by our own industry, we can, by the same means, better our condition."

"I am sorry, Mr. Morton," said Clement, "to be obliged to keep my son till this horse is shod, as the owner is waiting, and there is a new shoe to make; but after that he will be at liberty.—Strike, Robert."

Rich, eager to be released, struck with good will; the sparks flew all over the shop, and a second heat put the iron in such shape that Mr.[Pg 115] Richardson required no further help. Rich flung off his leather apron, washed himself in a bucket, and wiped the smut from Mort's cheek with a towel that did not put on much more dirt than it took off, when they left to cleanse themselves more effectually at the house.

The dwelling was old, out of repair, and consisted of three rooms on the ground floor, but two of them plastered, and a low attic. If Morton felt depressed by finding his friends in such wretched quarters, he could not but admire and wonder at the energy and cheerfulness with which Rich, his father, mother, and uncle bore up under their reverses. The girls, however, appeared chagrined and depressed, and seemed to him completely heart-broken. They were considerably older than Rich, some children having died between them. Rich, and Morton, after supper went to walk, the former observing that by reason of their limited accommodations there was no opportunity for conversation in the house. Following a footpath that led along the bank of the river, they entered a noble orchard, just commencing to blossom. It lay upon a declivity sloping to the river. Passing through it, they came to a swale sprinkled with elms, and commanding a fine view of the river, and flung themselves on the grass side by side.

"Rich," said Morton, "do you know what has surprised me more than anything else I have met with here?"

[Pg 116]

"I should think the pickle you found me in when you came into the shop."

"No; it is to find yourself and your parents in such good spirits. Most men, after having met with so great and sudden a reverse, would have become entirely disheartened, and I expected to find you completely prostrated."

"The cheerfulness is not assumed for the occasion, Mort."

"I know that, you could not deceive me in such a matter."

"Believe me, as far as I am concerned, and were it not for my sisters, and seeing my parents compelled to renew in their old age the hardships of their youth, I should be happier to-day than for the last year and a half, for I have now a clear conscience."

"What have you done? What crime have you committed to set your conscience in arms?"

"The crime of doing nothing; of wasting myself. You know what fine speeches I used to make in college about effort, setting the standard high, and all that sort of thing, and how pat at my tongue's end I always had 'per angusta ad augusta' (I'm in a way to realize one part of it now, I think); and as long as I was neck and neck with you and Hill, I did do somewhat; but after I came home, I just fell right back into the old ruts; could not make up my mind in regard to a profession; didn't really want[Pg 117] to. I was too comfortable; but I felt mean, felt guilty. When I went to Portland, and heard you argue that case, and saw how much labor it had cost you, and how nobly you came out of it, I felt meaner still, and was half inclined to return without seeing you, and resolved when I got home I would go to work; but I took it out in thinking so, till the trouble came like a flash of lightning; since then, I trust, I've done something, and been of some little use."

"Was it, then, so sudden? I knew that your father's difficulties came in consequence of his lumber and mills being carried away; but even a freshet gives some warning."

"None of us knew that father had every dollar invested in logs that were like to go down stream. He and uncle were anxious enough, but kept it to themselves; and the very night it came, when every man about the mills was out in the pouring rain watching for trouble, I was fooling—reciting a poem that I was going to deliver to a company of our young folks; and I'm ashamed to say, that what I am now going to tell you I had from Henry Alden, one of the men who was where I ought to have been, with my father at the time. You see that smooth, perpendicular ledge that makes out into the river?"

"Yes,"

"And that stake driven into a crack in the ledge?"

[Pg 118]

"Yes."

"When the water is up to that stake it is freshet pitch. All the morning and afternoon the water had been rising; in the evening, it was the same till it reached a fearful height, when one of the mills went. My father and Uncle Robert stood under that ledge with a lantern, watching the marks they had made on it with chalk. The rain had stopped, and for the last hour the water had not risen, the clouds had broken away overhead, and the stars came out. Every one of the men (all old river-drivers) thought the danger was over. 'Robert,' said my father, 'I think the booms will hold; the rain is over, and the river will soon fall.' The words were scarcely out of his mouth before there was a great cry from the bank above that the logs were coming. Henry said father turned pale, but never opened his mouth, or turned to look, but went straight home. When I came to the breakfast table the next morning, father was sitting there, a little paler than usual, but just as calm as ever, and told us what had taken place. You see now how sudden it must have been to me, mother, and the girls, and almost as much so to him, for he thought the crisis had passed."

"Why didn't the boom break before? and how came it to break after the water was done rising?"

&q............