He looked Mr. Pierce up and down, and then he
stared into the fire and puckered his mouth to whistle, but he didn't.
And finally he glanced at me, but I was looking into the fire, too.
"Just come, haven't you?" he asked. "How did you get up the hill?"
"Walked," said Mr. Pierce, smiling. "It took some digging, too. But
I didn't come for my health, unless you think three meals a day are
necessary for health."
Mr. Sam turned and stared at him. "By Jove! you don't mean it!"
"I wish I didn't," Mr. Pierce replied. "One of the hardest things
I've had to remember for the last ten hours was that for two years I
voluntarily ate only two meals a day. A man's a fool to do a thing like
that! It's reckless."
Mr. Sam got up and began to walk the floor, his hands in his pockets. He
tried to get my eye, but still I looked in the fire.
"All traffic's held up, Minnie," he said. "The eight o'clock train is
stalled beyond the junction, in a drift. I've wired the conductor, and
Carter isn't on it."
"Well?" said I.
"If we could only get past to-day," Mr. Sam went on; "if Thoburn would
only choke to death, or--if there was somebody around who looked like
Dick. I dare say, by to-morrow--" He looked at Mr. Pierce, who smiled
and looked at him.
"And I resemble Dick!" said Mr. Pierce. "Well, if he's a moral and
upright young man--"
"He isn't!" Mr. Sam broke in savagely. And then and there he sat down
and told Mr. Pierce the trouble we were in, and what sort of cheerful
idiot Dicky Carter was, and how everybody liked him, but wished he would
grow up before the family good name was gone, and that now he had a
chance to make good and be self-supporting, and he wasn't around, and
if Mr.
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