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Looked as if he just stepped out of one of Fred Remington’s pictures, or Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, or slipped from between the leaves of a volume of Captain Mayne Reid’s “Scalp Hunters”—Big Pete was evidently a hold-over from another age. He would have fitted perfectly and with nicety in a picture of Davy Crockett’s men down in old Texas.
"And what makes you think he is dead?" asked Stafford. "Why, you see," returned Mr. Middleton, "when our old pap died, something in the will stuck crossways in Bill’s swaller, and he left college and put to sea, and I hain’t heard from him in fifteen years." "Did he look like you?" said Raymond. "He was four years younger than I," answered Mr.
The young man is evidently ‘keeping company’ with Uncle Bill’s niece: and Uncle Bill’s hints—such as ‘Don’t forget me at the dinner, you know,’ ‘I shall look out for the cake, Sally,’ ‘I’ll be godfather to your first—wager it’s a boy,’ and so forth, are equally embarrassing to the young people, and delightful to the elder ones.
At last rousing himself he turned to his other guests, and said, "You mustn’t think hard on me, if I ain’t as peart and talkin’ like for a spell; Bill’s comin’ home has kinder oversot the old man, and I’m thinkin’ of the past when we’s little boys and lived at home on pap’s old plantation afore any of us was dead."
But on this day, Bill Jeffrey, touched by Fanny’s unlooked-for kindness, whispered to her, just as school was commencing, that she might take his big sled at recess. This was a treat indeed, and when recess came, Fanny, with half a dozen other girls, climbed to the top of the hill, and began piling on to Bill’s old sled.
"It must not be," said Joseph, and turning to Bill he added, "listen, William, to what I have to tell, then speed along on the lightning’s wing, and tear her from the altar—take her from his side, I say, and put there the other one, the pale, golden-haired one"; then, as he noticed the vacant look on Bill’s face, he added, "oh, no, you can’t tell it. You wouldn’t understand it.
Bill’s face grew still redder. “Yo’ lie, yo’ dog!” he hissed. “Yo’ father did send me to jail, but I war innocent, an’ he knowed it. But he thought I war only po’ white trash, while he is an aristocrat. I swore to hev my revenge, an’ I will hev it. Boys, what do we-uns do with hoss-thieves in ole Kentuck?” “Hang ’em,” exclaimed four or five voices. “An’ we-uns will hang this crowin’ bantam.
Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grandmother, at Uncle Bill’s splendid joke of ‘tea for four: bread-and-butter for forty;’ and the loud explosion of mirth which follows his wafering a paper ‘pigtail’ on the waiter’s collar.
Planting his foot upon a log, he with one hand drew from his head his old wool cap and thrust it under his arm, while with the other he twirled a huge brass watchkey, which hung suspended from his pocket. Tiger, who had accompanied Fanny, eyed Bill’s movements uneasily.
The odor entered Bill’s nostrils, the old appetite asserted itself, and before he knew it he had seized the bottle. A minute later it was empty! When Bill next came to realize what was happening, it was a week later. He had been drunk all the time; he did not even know what day it was; but when he realized what had happened, he was stricken with remorse.
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