I had a little talk with Jim alone. He said he would take good care of anything I'd give him, and carry it straight. So when night came I went and borrowed Mr. Cullen's pencil, and Holt tore me off a bit of clean brown paper he found in the flour-barrel, and I went off among the trees with it alone. I built a little fire for myself out of a huckleberry-bush, and sat down there on the snow to write. I couldn't do it in the shanty, with the noise and singing. The little brown paper wouldn't hold much; but these were the words I wrote,--I remember every one of them,--it is curious now I should, and that more than twenty years ago:-- "Dear Nancy,"--that was it,--"Dear Nancy, I can't get over it, and I take them all back. And if anything happens coming down on the logs--" I couldn't finish that anyhow, so I just wrote "Aaron" down in the corner, and folded the brown paper up. It didn't look any more like "Aaron" than it did like "Abimelech," though; for I didn't see a single letter I wrote,--not one. After that I went to bed, and wished I was Jim Jacobs. Next morning somebody woke me up with a push, and there was the boss. "Why, Mr. Cullen!" says I, with a jump. "Hurry up, man, and eat your breakfast," said he; "Jacobs is down sick with his cold." "_Oh!_" said I. "You and the pork must be back here day after to-morrow,--so be spry," said he. I rather think I was, Johnny. It was just eight o'clock when I started; it took some time to get breakfast, and feed the nags, and get orders. I stood there, slapping the snow with my whip, crazy to be off, hearing the last of what Mr. Cullen had to say. They gave me the two horses,--we hadn't but two,--oxen are tougher for going in, as a general thing,--and the lightest team on the ground; it was considerably lighter than Bob Stokes's. If it hadn't been for the snow, I might have put the thing through in two days, but the snow was up to the creatures' knees in the shady places all along; off from the road, in among the gullies, you could stick a four-foot measure down anywhere. So they didn't look for me back before Wednesday night. "I must have that pork Wednesday night sure," says Cullen. "Well, sir," says I, "you shall have it Wednesday noon, Providence permitting; and you shall have it Wednesday night anyway." "You will have a storm to do it in, I'm afraid," said he, looking at the clouds, just as I was whipping up. "You're all right on the road, I suppose?" "All right," said I; and I'm sure I ought to have been, for the times I'd been over it.