In a deserted lumber clearing up Big Shanty Brook a chipmunk skitted along a fallen hemlock in the drizzle of an October rain. Suddenly he stopped and listened, his heart, thumping against his sleek coat. He could hear the muffled roar of the torrent below him at the bottom of the ravine, talking and grumbling to itself, as it emptied its volume of water swollen by the heavy rains and sent it swirling out into the long green pool below.

"Was it the old brook that had frightened him?" he wondered. "Perhaps it was only the hedge-hog waddling along back from the brook to his hole in the ledge above, or it might be the kingfisher, who had tired of the bend of the brook a week before and had changed his thieving ground to the rapids above, where he terrorized daily a shy family of trout, pouncing upon the little ones with a great splashing and hysterical chattering as they darted about, panic-stricken, in the shallowest places.

"Perhaps, after all, it was only the creaking of a tree," he sighed, with a feeling of relief. Before he could lower his tail he heard the sound again—this time nearer—more alarming—the sound of human voices coming straight toward him.

Then came the sharp bark of a dog. At this the chipmunk went scurrying to safety along the great hemlock and over the sagging roof of the deserted shanty lying at its farther end, where he hid himself in a pile of rock.

There was no longer any doubt. Someone was approaching.

"If Billy Holcomb had only give us a leetle more time, Hite," came a voice, "we\'d had things fixed up slicker\'n they be; but she won\'t leak a drop, that\'s sartain, and if this here Mr. Thayor hain\'t too pertickler—"

"Billy allus spoke \'bout him as bein\' humin, Freme," returned his companion, "and seein\' he\'s humin I presume likely he\'ll understand we done our best. \'Twon\'t be long now," he added, "\'fore they\'ll git here."

Two men now emerged into the clearing. The foremost, Hite Holt, as he was known—was a veteran trapper from the valley—lean and wiry, and wearing a coonskin cap. From under this peered a pair of keen gray eyes, as alert as those of a fox. His straight, iron-gray hair reached below the collar of his coat, curling in long wisps about his ears after the fashion of the pioneer trapper. As he came on toward the shanty the chipmunk noticed that he bent under the weight of a pack basket loaded with provisions. He also noticed that his sixty years carried him easily, for he kept up a swinging gait as he picked his way over the fallen timber.

His companion, Freme Skinner, was a young lumberman of thirty, with red hair and blue eyes; a giant in build; clad in a heavy woollen lumber-man\'s jacket of variegated colours. One of his distinguishing features—one which gained for him the soubriquet of the "Clown" the country about, was the wearing of a girl\'s ring in his ear, the slit having been made with his pocket knife in a moment of gallantry. At the heels of the two men trotted silently a big, brindle hound.

They had reached the dilapidated shanty now and were taking a rapid glance at their surroundings.

"Seems \'ough it warn\'t never goin\' to clear up," remarked Hite Holt, the trapper, slipping the well-worn straps from his great shoulders and staggering with ninety pounds of dead weight until he deposited it in the driest corner of the shanty. Then he added with a good-natured smile: "Say, we come quite a piece, hain\'t we?"

During the conversation the dog stalked solemnly about, took a careful look at the shanty and its surroundings and disappeared in the thick timber in the direction of the brook. The trapper turned and looked after him, and a wistful, almost apologetic expression came into his face.

"I presume likely the old dog is sore about something," he remarked, when the hound was well out of hearing. "He\'s been kind er down in the mouth all day."

"\'Twarn\'t nothin\' we said \'bout huntin\' over to Lily Pond, was it?" ventured Freme.

"No—guess not," replied the trapper thoughtfully. "But you know you\'ve got to handle him jest so. He\'s gettin\' techier and older every day."

Imaginative as a child, with a subtle humour, often inventing stories that were weird and impossible, this strange character had lived the life of a hermit and a wanderer in the wilderness—a life compelling him to seek his companions among the trees or the black sides of the towering mountains. All nature, to him, was human—the dog was a being.

The Clown swung his double-bitted axe into a dry hemlock, the keen blade sinking deeper and deeper into the tree with each successive stroke, made with the precision and rapidity of a piston, until the tree fell with a sweeping crash (it had been as smoothly severed as if by a saw) and the two soon had its full length cut up and piled near the shanty for night wood.

It was not much of a shelter. Its timbered door had sagged from its hinges, its paneless square windows afforded but poor protection from wind and rain, while a cook stove, not worth the carrying away, supported itself upon two legs in one corner of the rotting interior.

Stout hands and willing hearts, however, did their work, and by the next sundown a new roof had been put on the shanty, "The Pride of the Home" wired more securely upon its two rusty legs and the long bunk flanking one side of the shanty neatly thatched with a deep bed of springy balsam. Thus had the tumble-down log-house been transformed into a tight and comfortable camp.

* * * * *

The next morning (the rain over) dawned as bright as a diamond, its light flashing on the brook below, across which darted the kingfisher, a streak of azure through the green of the pines—while in a clump of near-by firs two red squirrels played hide-and-seek among the branches.

At the first sunbeam the Clown stretched his great arms above his head, whistled a lively jig tune, reached for a fry pan, and soon had a mess of pork hissing over the fire. Later on, from a bent sapling a smoke-begrimed coffee pail bubbled, boiled over, and was lifted off to settle.

"A grand morning ain\'t it, Hite?" he shouted in high glee, rubbing his eyes as he squatted before the blaze. "Yes, sir—a grand mornin\'. Them deer won\'t hev\' time to stop and make up their beds arter the old dog gits to work on \'em to-day. I\'m tellin\' ye, Hite, we\'ll hev\' ven\'son \'fore night if Mr. Thayor and Billy takes a mind to go huntin\'."

"Mebbe," replied the trapper guardedly, "and mebbe we won\'t. There ain\'t no caountin\' on luck, specially deer. But it\'s jest as well to be ready"—and he squeezed another cartridge into the magazine of his Winchester and laid the rifle tenderly on its side in a dry place as if fearful of disturbing its fresh coat of oil.

Suddenly the old dog, who had been watching the frizzling bacon, lifted his ears and peered down in the basin of the hemlocks.

"Halloo!" came faintly from below where the timber was thickest.

The Clown sprang to his feet.

"Thar they be, Hite!" he said briskly. "By whimey—thar they be!"

The trapper strode out into the tangled clearing and after a resonant whoop in reply stood listening and smiling.

"Jest like Billy Holcomb," he remarked. "He\'s took \'bout as mean goin\' as a feller could find to git here." Then he added, "But you never could lose him."

"Whoop," came in answer, as the tall, agile figure of Holcomb appeared above the tangle of sumac, followed by a short, gray-haired man in blue flannel, who was stepping over a refractory sapling that Holcomb had bent down.

The trapper and the Clown strode clear of the brush and saw for the first time the man whose home they had been preparing.

Not the Samuel Thayor that Holcomb had talked to during that memorable luncheon at The Players, when he sat silent among Randall\'s guests; nor the Samuel Thayor who had faced his wife; nor the Samuel Thayor, the love of whose daughter put strength in his arms and courage in his heart. But a man with cheeks ruddy from the sting and lift of the morning air; all the worn, haggard look gone from his face.

"Wall, I swan!" shouted the trapper to Holcomb, as he came near enough to shake his hand, "you warn\'t perticler \'bout the way you come, Billy. If your friend ain\'t dead beat it ain\'t your fault."

"I hadn\'t any choice, Hite," laughed Holcomb. "You fellows must have been drowned out last night; the log over the South Branch is gone in the freshet; we had to get round the best way we could. Step up, Freme," he said. "I want you to know Mr. Thayor. This is Freme Skinner, Mr. Thayor, and this is Hite Holt, and there\'s no better anywhere round here."

Thayor stretched out both hands and caught each extended palm in a hearty grip.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Thayor," said the trapper, his great freckled paw tight in the white hand of the stranger. "By goll, you done well, friend. But what did ye let Billy lead you through sich a hell-patch as he did, Mr. Thayor?" There was a certain silent dignity about the trapper as he greeted the new-comer. As he spoke the old dog sniffed at Thayor\'s knees, and with a satisfied air regained his resting place once more.

"Well, it was about all I cared to do for one morning," answered Thayor between his breaths, "but you see we found the old trail impossible. And so you received our telegram in time," he said, glancing in delight at the freshly thatched roof of the shanty.

"Oh, we got it," answered the trapper. "Joe Dubois\'s boy come in with your telegram to the valley, and as soon as I got it I dug out for Freme, and we come in here day \'fore yesterday to git things comfortable."

"Breakfus, gentlemen!" announced the Clown, for the bacon was done to a turn. "How do you like yourn, Mr. Thayor—leetle mite o\' fat and lean?"

"Any way it happens to be," replied the millionaire, as he squeezed into his place at the rough board table next the trapper. "But before I touch a mouthful I want you all to understand that I don\'t wish to be considered as a guest. I\'m on a holiday and I\'m going to take my share of whatever comes."

"Thar, Freme!" exclaimed the trapper, "I told ye Mr. Thayor warn\'t perticler."

* * * * *

That night after supper the four sat chatting within the glow of the stove, while the old dog lay asleep. Possibly it was the persuasion latent in a bottle of Thayor\'s private reserve, that little by little coaxed the trapper into an unusually talkative mood, for until far into the night the man from the city lay on his back on the springy boughs, listening and smoking, keenly alive to every word the old man uttered.

"Most times now," he went on, as he leaned forward and patted the dog, "I let the old dog have his way—don\'t I, dog?—but then it warn\'t a week ago that \'twas t\'other way. Me and him was follerin\' a buck on Bald Mountin, and he got set on goin\' by way of West Branch, \'stead of travellin\' a leetle mite to the south, what would have brung us aout, as I figger it, jest this side o\' Munsey\'s. Wall, sir, arter we\'d been a-travellin\' steady, say, for more\'n four hours the old feller give in. Says he to me, \'I\'m beat,\' says he, julluk that, and he stopped and throwed up this gray snout of his\'n to the wind and then he says, kinder \'shamed like, \'I led ye off consid\'ble, hain\'t I?\' says he. I see he was feelin\' bad \'bout it, and I says, says I, \'It warn\'t your fault,\' says I, \'we come such a piece; a dog\'s jest as liable to be mistook as a humin\'; and arter that it warn\'t more\'n an hour \'fore we was out to the big road and poundin\' for home. Thar, now"—here he pushed the old dog gently from him—"lie down and take another snooze; ye\'re gittin\' so blamed lazy ain\'t no comfort livin\' with ye."

Thayor bent the closer to listen. Every moment brought some new sensation to his jaded nerves. This making a companion of a dog and endowing him with human qualities and speech was new to him.

The Clown now cut in: "And it beats all how ye kin understand him when he talks," he laughed, too loyal to his friend to throw doubt on the old trapper\'s veracity, "and yet it\'s kind o\' cur\'ous how a dog as old as him and that\'s had as much experience as him kin git twisted julluk some pusillanimous idjit that ain\'t never been off the poor-house road."

Thayor laughed softly to himself, not daring to bring the dialogue to a close by an intervention of his own.

"Now, there\'s Sam Pitkin\'s woman," the Clown continued with increased interest, "she\'s jest the same way; hain\'t never had no idee of whar a p\'int lays; takes sorter spells and forgits which way\'t is back to the house. Doc\' Rand see her last September when he come by with them new colts o\' his\'n. \'You\'re beat aout,\' said he, \'and there ain\'t no science kin cure ye. Ye won\'t more\'n pull aout till snow flies if ye don\'t give aout \'fore that\'—so he fixed up some physic for her and she give him a dollar and arter he tucked up the collar o\' that new sealskin coat o\' his\'n and spoke kinder sharp to Sam\'s boy what was holdin\' the colts, he laid them new yaller lines \'cross their slick backs and begun to talk to \'em: \'Come, Flo! Come, Maudie!\' says he. \'Git, gals!\' and he drawed the lines tight on \'em, and Sam\'s boy says it jest seemed as if they sailed off in the air."

Thayor broke out into a roar of laughter, and was about to ask the Clown whether the physic had killed the pneumonia or the woman, when the trapper slanting his shoulders against the bunk broke in with:

"Ye ain\'t laid it on a bit too thick, Freme." "I knowed Sam\'s woman, and I knowed her mother \'fore she married Bill Eldridge over to Cedar Corners."

"That\'s whar she was from—I seen her many a time. My old shanty warn\'t more \'n forty rod from where Morrison\'s gang built the new one."

Thayor\'s delighted ears drank in every word. The perfunctory discussion of a Board of Directors issuing a new mortgage was so many dull words compared with this human kind of speech.

"And now ye are here whar I kin get at ye, Billy," continued the trapper, "let me tell ye how bad I feel when I think ye never been over to see me, or stopped even for a night. Why it actually sets my blood a-bilin\'—makes me mad, as the feller said—" Here he nodded toward Thayor—"Some folks is that way, Mr. Thayor."

"I\'d like to have come," pleaded Holcomb, "but somehow, Hite, I never managed to get over your way. You see I live so far off now, and yet when I come to think of it, I must have passed close by it when I was gunning last fall over by Bear Pond."

"Yes—I knowed ye was gunnin\', and we cal\'lated ye\'d come in with them fellers what was workin\' for Joe Dubois. Me and the old dog never give up lookin\' for ye. The dog said he seen ye once, but you was too fur off to yell to."

"I want to know!" exclaimed the Clown, as he re-crossed his long legs.

"Goll—I felt sorry for the cuss; he took it so hard," Hite went on. "Then he owned up—tellin\' me that when he see I felt so lonesome and disappointed at ye not comin\', he\'d be daddinged if he could hold out any longer and see me so miserable; so he jest ris his ears and made believe you was a-comin\' and that he see ye, and that there warn\'t time to let ye know."

"Say—don\'t that beat all!" roared the Clown as he slapped his leg at the thought of the old dog\'s sagacity. Here the old dog cocked an ear and looked wistfully up into his master\'s face. Thayor could hardly believe the dog did not understand.

Hite paused in his narrative for breath. When these men of the woods, living often for weeks and months with no fellow-being to talk to, loosen up they run on as unceasingly as a brook.

"But dang yer old hide, Billy, what I got most again\' ye is that ye ain\'t writ afore," and he slapped his young friend Holcomb vigorously on the back. "\'Twarn\'t a night that passed when I was to hum in the valley last winter, but what I\'d kinder slink away from the store arter they\'d sorted out what mail thar was, feelin\' ashamed, julluk the old dog does when he\'s flambussled into a trout hole ahead of ye. \'Why, how you take it,\' my old woman would say; \'like as not Billy\'s been so busy he hain\'t had time to write ye and it hain\'t come,\' says she. \'No,\' said I, \'if he\'s writ I\'d had it \'fore this. United States mail don\'t lie,\' says I."

"But I did write you," declared Holcomb earnestly.

"Yes, so ye did, for I hadn\'t more\'n said it \'fore down comes Dave Brown and says: \'Eke says thar\'s a letter come for ye in to-night\'s mail,\' \'Why, haow you talk!\' says I, and I reached for my tippet and drawed on my boots and started for Munsey\'s. \'For the land\'s sakes!\' my old woman yelled arter me. \'Whar are ye a-goin\' a night like this, Hite Holt?\' \'Don\'t stop me,\' says I, \'the old cuss has writ—the old cuss has writ—jest as I knowed he would. Most likely,\' says I, \'he\'s broke his leg or couldn\'t git out to the settlement \'count the snow, or he\'d writ \'fore this. Don\'t stop me,\' says I, and aout I went and tramped through four feet of snow to the store and there lay yer welcome wad as neat as a piney in a little box over the caounter, and the lamp throwin\' a pinky glow over its side, and that scratchy old handwritin\' o\' yourn I\'d knowed three rod off. Thar it lay kinder laughin\' at me and slanted so\'s I could jest read it. Gosh! but I was tickled!"

The trapper drew a sliver of wood from the stove, shielded its yellow flame in the hollow of his hand and re-lit his pipe.

Back in the shadow of the bunk lay Thayor drinking in every word of the strange talk so full of human kindness and so simple and genuine. For some moments his gray eyes rested on the gentle face of the old trapper, the wavering firelight lighting up the weather-beaten wrinkles.

Soon he straightened up, threw the white ash of his cigar toward the stove and slid gingerly to the dirt floor, his muscles lame from the morning\'s tramp, and calling to Billy to follow him, went out into the cool air.

The banker made his way carefully through the tangle until he reached the edge of the ledge overhanging the boiling torrent below, white as milk in the moonlight. He selected a dry log and for some minutes sat smoking and gazing in silence at the torrent, whose hoarse roar was the only sound coming up from the sleeping forest. So absorbed was he with his own thoughts that he seemed unconscious that Holcomb was beside him. His gaze wandered from the brook to the forest of hemlocks bristling from the opposite bank, their shaggy tops touched with silver. Beyond lay the wilderness—a rolling sea of soft hazy timber hemmed in by the big mountains, flanked by wet granite slides that shone like quicksilver.

"Billy," he began at length.

Holcomb started; it was the first time the banker had called him
"Billy."

Suddenly Thayor looked up, and Holcomb saw that the gray eyes were dim with tears.

"You\'re not sick, are you, Mr. Thayor?" asked Holcomb, starting toward him.

"No, my boy," replied Thayor huskily; "I\'ve been happy for a whole day, that is all. Happy for a whole day. Think of it!"

"I\'m glad—and you haven\'t found it too rough; and the things were comfortable, too?" ventured Holcomb.

"Too rough! Why, man, this is Paradise! Think of it, Billy—your friends have been actually interested in me—in my comfort—me, remember!"

"Why, of course," returned Holcomb. "They think a heap of your being here—besides, there are not two better-hearted men in these whole woods than Freme and the old man."

Again the gray eyes gazed down into the torrent.

"What I want to say to you is this: I want you to let me know what you think would be right at the end of our stay, and I\'ll see that they get it."

Holcomb straightened and looked up with surprise.

"But they\'re not here, Mr. Thayor, for money; neither of them would accept a cent from you."

"What! Why, that isn\'t right, Billy. You mean to say that Holt and Skinner have come up here and fixed up this shanty to hunt with us for nothing!" stammered the financier. "I won\'t have it."

"Yes," answered Holcomb, his voice softening, "it\'s just as I\'m telling you. That\'s the kind of men the Clown and Hite are. You\'d only insult them if you tried to pay them. There are a lot of things the old man has done in his life that he has never taken a cent for; and as for the Clown, I\'ve seen him many a time doing odd jobs for some poor fellow that couldn\'t help himself. I\'ve seen him, too, after a hard month\'s chopping in the lumber woods working for Pat Morrison, come into Pat\'s hotel and pay the whole of his month\'s wages out in treat to a lot of lumber jacks he\'d meet maybe Saturday night, and knew maybe he\'d never see again by Monday morning."

"And yet you tell me they are both poor."

"Poor isn\'t the word for it. Why, I\'ve seen Freme when he\'s been broke so he didn\'t have the price of a glass of beer at Pat\'s, build a dog house for some of the children, or help the hired girl by stacking a pile of wood handy for her."

It was a new doctrine for the banker—one he had never been accustomed to; and yet when he thought it over, and recalled the look in the old trapper\'s face and the hearty humour and independence of the Clown, he felt instantly that Holcomb was right. Something else must be done for them—but not money. For some moments he sat gazing into the weird stillness, then he asked in one of his restful tones:

"Billy—who owns this place?"

"You mean the shanty?"

"I mean as far as we can see."

"Well," answered Holcomb, "as far as we can see is a good ways. Morrison owns part of it—that is from the South Branch down to the State Road, and—let\'s see—after that there\'s a couple of lots belonging to some parties in Albany; then, as soon as you get across above the big falls it is all state land clear to Bear Brook—yes, clear to the old military road, in fact."

"Are there any ponds?" asked Thayer.

"Yes—four," replied Holcomb. "Lily Pond, and little Moose and Still
Water and—"

"I see," interrupted Thayor.

"Why do you ask?" inquired Holcomb, wondering at the drift of Thayor\'s inquiry.

"Oh, nothing. That is, nothing now. How many acres do you think it all covers?"

"I should say about fifteen thousand," replied Holcomb.

"Only fifteen thousand, eh?"

For an instant he paused and looked out over the sweep of forest, with the gaunt trees standing like sentinels. Then he raised his hands above his head and in a half-audible voice murmured:

"My God, what freedom! I\'ll turn in now if you don\'t mind, Billy."

And so ended the banker\'s first day in the wilderness.