"But uncle will not expect you, Tom, mother refused so positively to let
you go. Perhaps he has gone away from the part of the country he wrote
from, and you may not be able to find him."

"I shall be able to find him," Tom said confidently. "When that letter
went, I sent one of my own to him, and said that though mother would not
hear of my going now, I might come out to him when I got older if I
could get nothing to do here, and asked him to send me a few words
directed to the post-office telling me how I might find him. He wrote
back saying that if I called at the Empire Saloon at a small town called
Denver, in Colorado, I should be likely to hear whereabouts he was, and
that he would sometimes send a line there with instructions if he should
be long away."

"I see you have set your mind on going, Tom," Carry said sadly.

"No, I have not set my mind on it, Carry. I am perfectly ready to stop
here if you can see any way for me to earn money, but I cannot stop here
idle, eating and drinking, while you girls are working for us all."

"If you were but three or four years older, Tom, I should not so much
mind, and though it would be a terrible blow to part with you, I do not
see that you could do anything better; but you are only sixteen."

"Yes, but I am strong and big for my age; I am quite as strong as a good
many men. Of course I don't mean the boatmen and the dockyard maties,
but men who don't do hard work. Anyhow, there are lots of men who go out
to America who are no stronger than I am, and of course I shall get
stronger every month. I can walk thirty miles a day easy, and I have