"Nine thousand feet above sea-level!" he would assure himself in self-congratulatory mood. "When I come to quit, I sha' n't hev fur to go!" which confidence in the direction his spirit was destined to take, may fairly be accepted as indication of a good conscience. Amberley had not married, and although he felt the omission to be matter for regret, he had never, as far as his recollection served him, found his wish to do so particularized in favor of any one woman. "No, I ain't never married," he reluctantly admitted, when Enoch Baker, his next-door neighbor at Lame Gulch, pressed the point. Enoch lived with his wife just round on the other side of Bear Mountain, only three miles away, and although his now elderly consort was reputed to be unamiable,--not to say cantankerous,--yet her existence, and the existence in the world outside, of many children and grandchildren, conferred upon him the enviable dignity of a man of family. He was a Yankee, and his thirst for information was not to be lightly appeased. "Disapp'inted?" he asked, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and pulling out a venerable tobacco-pouch, with a view to "fillin' her up" again. "Disapp'inted?" "Yes; ruther,--bein' as I was always fond of children." Amberley was himself a tall, limp-looking downeaster, with pleasant, unsuspicious eyes, and a guileless spirit. He used to hand his cattle over to Baker once a year, and let him drive them with his own down the long mountain road to Springtown, and it was understood than he did not inquire too curiously in the matter of commissions. The stores and fodder which Enoch delivered over to him in exchange, together with a plausibly varying amount of hard cash, seemed to Simon an ample return for the scrawny cattle he sent to market. And Enoch, for his part, was always willing to testify that Amberley was a pleasant man to deal with. "What was she like?" Enoch inquired, in the tone of a connoisseur, transfixing Amberley with his shrewd eyes. "Don't know's I could tell you, neighbor, I kind o' fancied the ones with the snappin' black eyes. But I ruther guess some other kind would ha' done's well, when it come to the pint." Enoch raised his eyebrows inquiringly. "Wouldn't ary one on 'em hev you?" he asked. "Never asked 'em," was the reply. "It was this way," Amberley went on, gathering himself together for the unaccustomed effort of expounding a situation. "I never seemed to feel to hev _gumption_ enough to raise a family." Enoch's countenance took on a judicial look. "Yet you've got a good eddication," he remarked, after thoughtful consideration of the case. "You've got book larnin' enough to make your way." "Wall, yes; the eddication's stayed by me. I ruther guess 'twas the gumption that got knocked out. That was at Antietam." "Didn't know you was in the war," Enoch exclaimed, with a visible accession of respect. "Was you hit?"