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 m