"Why, don't you mean ever to come here again? If you don't, you had better take her with you. Any way, she is mine no longer. What shall be done with her? Shall Michael blanket and prepare her to accompany us to New York? or will you leave her here till you come back?" "Ah! Do you fancy I am child enough to believe in such a conveyance as that? It wouldn't stand in any court of law." "What would you have? There isn't a magistrate within four miles, and we haven't the time to draw up a document properly. I will tell you what can be done as next best. I will record the transaction here, above her manger, and there it shall remain to remotest ages, 'to witness if I lie.'" Mr. Rutledge took out his penknife, and with considerable ingenuity carved in the sturdy old oak beam, the transfer of Madge Wildfire from himself to me, using, for brevity, only initials, and then the date. I climbed up to the fourth round of the ladder when it was completed, and did my best to achieve a signature, but the result was so unsatisfactory that Mr. Rutledge put beneath it, "her mark," and so it stands to this day, I suppose. This transaction having consumed a good deal of the hour and a quarter that we had before starting, Mr. Rutledge rather hurried up my adieux with my new favorite, and it was very ungraciously that he submitted to wait till I had cut a lock from her black mane, and embraced her tenderly for the twentieth time. "Nobody is to ride her, remember," I said, as we went out; "only, of course, the man who takes care of her, when it is necessary for exercise." "Your orders shall be obeyed. Any further instructions that may occur to you in the course of the winter you had better commit to paper and send to me, and I will observe them faithfully." "Oh, I depend entirely on your integrity; I am confident you will be careful of her. Anyway," I continued, "it's a comfort to know I own anything at Rutledge, and have a sort of claim upon its hospitality still. Ah! how long it will be before I walk up this road with you again, Mr. Rutledge!" "Maybe not," he answered. "You shall, if you will, come back and make me a visit before many months are over; you shall come back and see how Rutledge looks in her June dress, "'When all this leafless and uncolored scene, Shall flush into variety again;' when this dull November sky shall have given place to the warmest summer sunshine, and this hard, frozen earth shall be soft and brown, and roses shall be blooming about this dreary porch, and the garden shall be one wilderness of sweets, and the trees and the lawn shall be all of the richest green. Will you come then, if I send for you?" I checked my look of delight with a sigh: "you'll forget before that time, I'm afraid. And I don't believe my aunt would let me come."