The sunniness of his ever-boyish heart
radiated with warmth that would have flooded a much deeper gloom
than that which settled within his eager young life. Suffer? ah! yes,
he suffered, not with locked teeth and stony stoicism, not with the
masterful self-command, the reserve, the conquered bitterness of the
still-water sort of nature, that is supposed to run to such depths.
He tried to be bright, and his sweet old boyish self. He would laugh
sometimes in a pitiful, pathetic fashion. He took to petting dogs,
looking into their large, solemn eyes with his wistful, questioning
blue ones; he would kiss them, as women sometimes do, and call them
"dear old fellow," in tones that had tears; and once in the course
of his travels while at a little way-station, he discovered a huge
St. Bernard imprisoned by some mischance in an empty freight car;
the animal was nearly dead from starvation, and it seemed to salve
his own sick heart to rescue back the dog's life. Nobody claimed the
big starving creature, the train hands knew nothing of its owner,
and gladly handed it over to its deliverer. "Hudson," he called
it, and afterwards when Joe McDonald would relate the story of his
brother's life he invariably terminated it with, "And I really
believe that big lumbering brute saved him.
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