ossed the mountains, and my division came down the Yellowstone," Clark was saying. "By the way, Judy, I have named a river for you,—the Judith."
A peal of laughter rang through the dining-room.
"Judith! Judith, did you say? Why, Captain Clark, my name is Julia."
Clark was confounded. He almost feared Judy was making fun of him.
"Is it, really, now? I always supposed Judy stood for Judith."
Again rang out the infectious peal, in which Clark himself joined; but to this day rolls the river Judith in Montana, named for Clark's mountain maid of Fincastle.
"That I should live to see you back from the Pacific!" was Aunt Molly's greeting at "The Farm," at Charlottesville. "I reckoned the cannibal savages would eat you. We looked for nothing less than the fate of Captain Cook."
But Maria, whose eyes had haunted Lewis in many a long Montana day, seemed strangely shy and silent. In fact, she had another lover, perhaps a dearer one.
Uncle Nicholas was sick. He was growing old, but still directed the negroes of a plantation that extended from Charlottesville to the Fluvanna.
It was sunset when Captain Lewis reached the home at Locust Hill, and was folded to his mother's bosom. With daily prayer had Lucy Meriwether followed her boy across the Rocky Mountains.
Meriwether's little pet sister, Mary Marks, had blossomed into a bewitching rose.
"Here is a letter from the President."
Captain Lewis read his first message from Jefferson in more than two years and a half.
Turning to Big White, the chief, who at every step had gazed with amazement at the white man's country,—
"The President says 'Tell my friend of Mandan that I have already opened my arms to receive him."
"Ugh! Ugh!" commented Big White, with visions of barbaric splendour in his untutored brain.
That afternoon the entire party rode over to Mon
