have a fine time, Tim and I, but Captain and Colonel will have to be
content to hear about it when I get back. Surely it will give us much
to talk of in the winter nights, when we three sit by the fire
again--Captain and Colonel and I.

[Illustration: Old Captain.]

Tim says it is lonely for me here. Lonely? Pshaw! I know the ways of
the valley, and there is not a lonely spot in it from the bald top of
Thunder Knob to the tall pine on the Gander's head. I would have Tim
stay here with me, but he says no. He wants to win a marble mausoleum.
I shall be content to lie beneath a tree. Tim is ambitious.

Just a few nights ago, we sat smoking in the evening, warming our
hearts at the great hearth-stone. Thunder Knob was all aglow, and the
cloud coals were piled heaven-high above it, burning gold and red.
Down in the meadow Captain and Colonel raced from shock to shock on the
trail of a rabbit, and a flock of sheep, barnward bound, came bleating
along the road.

[Illustration: When we three sit by the fire.]

Tim began to suppose. He was supposing me a great lawyer and himself a
great merchant and all that. I lost all patience with him.

Suppose it all, Tim, I said. Suppose that you, the great tea-king, and
I, the statesman, sat here smoking. Would the cloud coals over there
on Thunder Knob blaze up higher in our honor? And the quail, perched
on the fence-stake, would she address herself to us or to Mr. Robert
White down in the meadow? Would the night-hawk, circling in the