"What makes you so happy?" asked Will. "The kindness o' natur' what gave me that kind o' a disposition," replied the Little Giant, "an' added to it the feelin' that all the time I'm drawin' closer to my gold. What did you say my share would be, young William, a matter o' a million or a half million?" "A quarter of a million." "Seems to me it wuz a half million, but somehow it grows ez we go 'long. When you git rich, even in the mind, you keep on gittin' richer." Then he began to whistle a gallant battle stave with extraordinary richness and variety of tone, and when he had finished Will asked: "What was that song, Tom? It's a new one to me." "It's new to most people," replied the Little Giant, "but it's old jest the same. It wuz writ 'way back in the last war with England, an' I'll quote you the first two verses, words an' grammar both correct: "Britannia's gallant streamers Float proudly o'er the tide, And fairly wave Columbia's stripes In battle side by side, And ne'er did bolder seamen meet Where ocean surges pour O'er the tide now they ride While the bell'wing thunders roar While the cannon's fire is flashing fast And the bell'wing thunders roar. "When Yankee meets the Briton Whose blood congenial flows, By Heaven created to be friends By fortune reckoned foes: Hard then must be the battle fray E'er well the fight is o'er, Now they ride, side by side, While the bell'wing thunders roar, While the cannon's fire is flashing fast And the bell'wing thunders roar. "That's a lot more verses, young William, an' it's all 'bout them great naval duels o' the war o' 1812, an' you'll notice that whoever writ 'em had no ill feelin' in his natur', an' give heaps o' credit to the British. It does seem that we an' the British ought to be friends, bein' so close kin, actin' so much alike, an' havin' institutions just the same, 'cept that whar they hev a king we hev a president. Yet here we are quarrelin' with 'em a lot, though not more than they quarrel with us." "The trouble lies in the fact that we speak the same language," said Will. "Every word of abuse spoken by one is understood by the other. Now, if the French or the Spanish or the Russians denounce us we never hear anything about it, don't know even that it's been done." "That's good ez fur ez it goes," said the Little Giant. "I've seen a lot o' English that don't speak any English, a-tall, fellers that come out o' the minin' regions in England an' some from London, too, that talked a lingo soundin' ez much like English ez Sioux does, but it doesn't alter the fact that them an' us ought to be friends. An' I reckon we will be now, 'cause I hear they're claimin' that our Washington wuz an Englishman, the same immortal George that they would hev hung in the Revolution along with his little hatchet, too, ef they could hev caught him." Will laughed with relish.