“But what we all want to know--and old Suan took a black stick to make marks for you--is why the old man hath run away, and where. Young Firm, who was getting a sight too uppish for me to have long put up with him, he was going about here, there, and every where, from the very first time of your going away, opening his mouth a deal too much, and asking low questions how long I stopped to dinner. Old Suan said he was troubled in his mind, as the pale-faces do about young girls, instead of dragging them to their wigwams; and she would give him a spell to get over it. But nothing came of that; and when the war broke out, he had words with his grandfather, and went off, so they said, to join the rebels. “Sawyer let him go, as proud as could be, though he would sooner have cut his own head off; and the very same night he sat down by his fire and shammed to eat supper as usual. But I happened to go in to get some orders, and, my heart, I would never wish to see such things again! “The old man would never waste a bit of victuals, as you know, Miss 'Rema; and, being acquaint with Suan's way of watching, he had slipped all his supper aside from his plate, and put it on a clean pocket-handkerchief to lock it in the press till his appetite should serve; and I caught him in the act, and it vexed him. 'Ha'n't you the manners to knock at the door?' he said; and I said, 'Certainly,' and went back and done it; and, troubled as he was, he grinned a bit. Then he bowed his great head, as he always did when he knew he had gone perhaps a trifle too far with a man in my position. I nodded to forgive him, and he stood across, and saw that he could do no less than liquor me, after such behavior. But he only brought out one glass; and I said, 'Come, Colonel, square is square, you know.' 'Excuse of me, Martin,' he said; 'but no drop of strong drink passes the brim of my mouth till this gallivanting is done with. I might take too much, as the old men do, to sink what they don't want to think on.' 'You mean about bully-cock Firm,' says I; 'rebel Firm--nigger-driver Firm.' 'Hush!' he said; 'no bad words about it. He has gone by his conscience and his heart. What do we know of what come inside of him?'