e," said Sam, as he led in a dash for home.

That night a heavy storm set in, and next day the boys found their
flimsy wigwam blown down--nothing but a heap of ruins.

Some time after, Raften asked at the table in characteristic stern
style, "Bhoys, what's doin' down to yer camp? Is yer wigwam finished?"

"No good," said Sam. "All blowed down."

"How's that?"

"I dunno'. It smoked like everything. We couldn't stay in it."

"Couldn't a-been right made," said Raften; then with a sudden
interest, which showed how eagerly he would have joined in this forty
years ago, he said, "Why don't ye make a rale taypay?"

"Dunno' how, an' ain't got no stuff."

"Wall, now, yez have been pretty good an' ain't slacked on the wurruk,
yez kin have the ould wagon kiver. Cousin Bert could tache ye how to
make it, if he wuz here. Maybe Caleb Clark knows," he added, with a
significant twinkle of his eye. "Better ask him." Then he turned to
give orders to the hired men, who, of course, ate at the family table.

"Da, do you care if we go to Caleb?"

"I don't care fwhat ye do wid him," was the reply.

Raften was no idle talker and Sam knew that, so as soon as "the law
was off" he and Yan got out the old wagon cover. It seemed like an
acre of canvas when they spread it out. Having thus taken possession,
they put it away again in the cow-house, their own domain, and Sam
said: "I've a great notion to go right to Caleb; he sho'ly knows more
about a teepee than any one else here, which ain't sayin' much."

"Who's Caleb?"

"Oh, he's the old Billy Goat that shot at Da oncet, just after Da beat
him at a horse trade. Let on it was a mistake: 'twas, too, as he
found out, coz Da bought up some old notes of his, got 'em cheap, and
squeezed him hard to meet them. He's had hard luck ever since.

"He's a mortal queer old duck, that Caleb. He knows heaps about the
woods, coz he was a hunter an' trapper oncet. My! wouldn't he be down
on me if he knowed who was my Da, but he don't have to know."

IV

The Sanger Witch

The Sanger Witch dwelt in the bend of the creek,
And neither could read nor write;
But she knew in a day what few knew in a week,
For hers was the second sight.
"Read?" said she, "I am double read;
You fools of the ink and pen
Count never the eggs, but the sticks of the nest,
See the clothes, not the souls of men."

--Cracked Jimmy's Ballad of Sanger.

The boys set out for Caleb's. It was up the cre