Redbud, I am going to get some filberts--will you have some ?" "If you please." So Verty went to the bushes, and brought his hat full of them, and cracked them on a stone--the sun lighting up his long, tangled curls, and making brighter his bright smile.
Redbud stooped down, and gathered the kernels as they jumped from the shell, laughing and happy.
They had returned to their childhood again--bright and tender childhood, which dowers our after life with so many tender, mournful, happy memorials;--whose breezes fan our weary brows so often as we go on over the thorny path, once a path of flowers.

They were once more children, and they wandered thus through the beautiful forest, collecting their memories, laughing here, sighing there--and giving an association or a word to every feature of the little landscape.
"How many things I remember," Verty said, thoughtfully, and smiling; "there, where Milo, the good dog, was buried, and a shot fired over him--there, where we treed the squirrel--and over yonder, by the run, which I used to think flowed by from fairy land--I remember so many things!" "Yes--I do too," replied the girl, thoughtfully, bending her head.
"How singular it is that an Indian boy like me should have been brought up here," Verty said, buried in thought; "I think my life is stranger than what they call a romance." Redbud made no reply.
"_Ma mere_ would never tell me anything about myself," the young man went on, wistfully, "and I can't know anything except from her.

I must be a Dacotah or a Delaware." Redbud remained thoughtful for some moments, then raising her head, said: "I do not believe you are an Indian, Verty.

There is some mystery about you which I think the old Indian woman should tell.

She certainly is not your mother," said Redbud, with a little smiling air of dogmatism.
"I don't know," Verty replied, "but I wish I did know.