I used to think a great deal about Nancy nights, when we were sitting up by the fire,—­we had our fire right in the middle of the hut, you know, with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out.  When supper was eaten, the boys all sat up around it, and told stories, and sang, and cracked their jokes; then they had their backgammon and cards; we got sleepy early, along about nine or ten o’clock, and turned in under the roof with our blankets.  The roof sloped down, you know, to the ground; so we lay with our heads in under the little eaves, and our feet to the fire,—­ten or twelve of us to a shanty, all round in a row.  They built the huts up like a baby’s cob-house, with the logs fitted in together.  I used to think a great deal about your mother, as I was saying; sometimes I would lie awake when the rest were off as sound as a top, and think about her.  Maybe it was foolish, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have told anybody of it; but I couldn’t get rid of the notion that something might happen to her or to me before five months were out, and I with those words unforgiven.

Then, perhaps, when I went to sleep, I would dream about her, walking back and forth, up and down, in her nightgown and little red shawl, with the great heavy baby in her arms.

So it went along till come the last of January, when one day I saw the boys all standing round in a heap, and talking.

“What’s the matter?” says I.

“Pork’s given out,” says Bob, with a whistle.  “Beadle got that last lot from Jenkins there, his son-in-law, and it’s sp’ilt.  I could have told him that beforehand.  Never knew Jenkins to do the fair thing by anybody yet.”

“Who’s going down?” said I, stopping short.  I felt the blood run all over my face, like a woman’s.

“Cullen hasn’t made up his mind yet,” says Bob, walking off.

Now you see there wasn’t a man on the ground who wouldn’t jump at the chance to go; it broke up the winter for them, and sometimes they could run in home for half an hour, driving by; so there wasn’t much of a hope for me.  But I went straight to Mr. Cullen.

“Too late!  Just promised Jim Jacobs,” said he, speaking up quick; it was just business to him, you know.

I turned off, and I didn’t say a word.  I wouldn’t have believed it, I never would have believed it, that I could have felt so cut up about such a little thing.  Cullen looked round at me sharp.

“Hilloa, Hollis!” said he.  “What’s to pay?”

“Nothing, thank you, sir,” says I, and walked off, whistling.

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:—­