JOHN NORTON,
TO THE CARE OF WILD BILL.
"Yis, the 'J' be his'n," muttered the old man, as he spelled out the word J-o-h-n, "and the big 'N' be as plain as an otter-trail in the snow. The boy don't make his letters over plain, as I conceit, but the 'J' and the 'N' be his'n." And then he paused for a full minute, his head bowed over the box. "The boy don't forgit," he murmured, and he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "The boy don't forgit." And then he added, "No, he isn't one of the forgittin' kind. Wild Bill," said the Trapper, as he turned toward that personage, whose attack on the venison haunch was as determined as ever, "Wild Bill, this box be from Henry!"
"I shouldn't wonder," answered that individual, speaking from a mass of edibles that filled his mouth.
"And it be a Christmas gift!" continued the old man.
"It looks so," returned Bill, as laconically as before.
"And it be a mighty heavy box!" said the Trapper.
"You'd 'a' thought so, if you had dragged it over the mile-and-a-half carry. It was good sleddin' on the river, but the carry took the stuff out of me."
"Very like, very like," responded the Trapper; "fur the gullies be deep on the carry, and it must have been slippery haulin'. Didn't ye git a leetle 'arnest in yer feelin's, Bill, afore ye got to the top of the last ridge?"
"Old man," answered Bill, as he wheeled his chair toward the Trapper, with a pint cup of tea in the one hand, and wiping his mustache with the coat sleeve of the other, "I got it to the top three times, or within a dozen feet from the top, and each time it got away from me and went to the bottom agin; for the roots was slippery, and I couldn't git a grip on the toe of my moccasins; but I held on to the rope, and I got to the bottom neck and neck with the sled every time."