With good care he'd growed up nice an' bright, an' as big as the average, an' smarter 'n a steel trap.

He liked bein' with me better 'n anybody else, and when I c'd manage to have him I couldn't bear to have him out o' my sight.

Wa'al, as I told you, he got to be most seven year old.

I'd had to go out to Chicago, an' one day I got a telegraph sayin' he was putty sick--an' I took the fust train East.

It was 'long in March, an' we had a breakdown, an' run into an awful snowstorm, an' one thing another, an' I lost twelve or fifteen hours.