In the summer evenings, when they walked together on the Battery, and in
winter nights, when they sat together by the stove, Davie talked to his
wife and child of that wonderful brother, who had gone to look for
fortune in the great West. The simplicity of the elder two and the
enthusiasm of the youth equally accepted the tale.

Somehow, through many a year, a belief in his return invested life with
a glorious possibility. Any night they might come home and find Uncle
Sandy sitting by the fire, with his pockets full of gold eagles, and no
end of them in some safe bank, besides.

But when the youth had finished his schooldays, had learned a trade and
began to go sweethearting, more tangible hopes and dreams agitated all
their hearts; for young Sandy Morrison opened a carpenter's shop in his
own name, and began to talk of taking a wife and furnishing a home.

He did not take just the wife that pleased his father and mother. There
was nothing, indeed, about Sallie Barker of which they could complain.
She was bright and capable, but they _felt_ a want they were not able to
analyze; the want was that pure unselfishness which was the ruling
spirit of their own lives.

This want never could be supplied in Sallie's nature. She did right
because it was her duty to do right, not because it gave her pleasure to
do it. When they had been married three years the war broke out, and
soon afterward Alexander Morrison was drafted for the army. Sallie, who
was daily expecting her second child, refused all consolation; and,
indeed, their case looked hard enough.

At first the possibility of a substitute had suggested itself; but a