"Is Fletcher dead, Uncle Tucker?" he inquired, laughing.

"No, no; nobody's dead that I've heard of," responded Tucker in
his cheerful voice; "but something better than Bill Fletcher's
death has happened, I can tell you. Why, I'd been sitting out
here an hour or more, longing for the spring to come, when
suddenly I looked down and there was the first dandelion--a
regular miracle--blooming in the mould about that old rose-bush."

"Well, I'll be hanged!" exclaimed Christopher, aghast. "Mark my
words, you'll be in an asylum yet."

The other chuckled softly.

"When you put me there you'll shut up the only wise man in the
county," he returned. "If your sanity doesn't make you happy, I
can tell you it's worth a great deal less than my craziness. Look
at that dandelion, now--it has filled two hours chock full of
thought and colour for me when I might have been puling indoors
and nagging at God Almighty about trifles. The time has been when
I'd have walked right over that little flower and not seen it,
and now it grows yellower each minute that I look at it, and each
minute I see it better than I did the one before. There's nothing
in life, when you come to think of it--not Columbus setting out
to sea nor Napoleon starting on a march--more wonderful than that
brave little blossom putting up the first of all through the
earth."

"I can't see anything in a dandelion but a nuisance," observed
Christopher, sitting down on the bench and baring his head to the