mbles a bit of vine-clad sculpture from an Italian
garden, but is real flesh and blood and a good fellow."

"I don't understand your high-toned talk," said Berry. "This shirt suits
me to a dot."

"It is the pride of New Salem," said the Doctor. "Mr. Traylor has just
acquired an interest in all our institutions. He has bought the Gollaher
tract and is going to build a house and some fences. Abe, couldn't you
help get the timber out in a hurry so we can have a raising within a
week? You know the arts of the axe better than any of us."

Abe looked at Samson.

"I reckon he and I would make a good team with the axe," he said. "He
looks as if he could push a house down with one hand and build it up with
the other. You can bet I'll be glad to help in any way I can."

"We'll all turn in and help. I should think Bill or Jack Kelso could look
after the store for a few days," said the Doctor. "I promised to take Mr.
Traylor over to Jack Kelso's to-night. Couldn't you come along?"

"Good! We'll have a story-tellin' and get Jack to unlimber his guns,"
said Abe.

It was a cool evening with a promise of frost in the air. Jack Kelso's
cabin, one of two which stood close together at the western end of the
village, was lighted by the cheery blaze of dry logs in its fireplace.
There were guns on a rack over the fireplace under a buck's head; a
powder horn hanging near them on its string looped over a nail. There
were wolf and deer and bear pelts on the floor. The skins of foxes,
raccoons and wildcats adorned the log walls. Jack Kelso was a blond,
smooth faced, good-looking, merry-hearted Scot, about forty years old,
of a rather slight build, some five feet, eight inches tall. That is all
that any one knew of him save that he spent most of his time hunting and
fishing and seemed to have all the best things, which great men had said
or written, on the tip of his tongue. He was neatly dressed in a blue
flannel coat and shirt, top boots and riding breeches.

"Welcome! and here's the best seat at the fireside," he said to Samson.

Then, as he filled his pipe, he quoted the lines from Cymbeline:

"'Think us no churls nor measure our good minds
By this rude place we live in.'

"My wife and daughter are away for a visit and for two days I've had the
cabin to myself. Look, ye worshipers of fire, and see how fine it is now!
The homely cabin is a place of beauty. Everything has the color of the
rose, coming and going in the flickeri