led and ink-smeared memoranda, periods which were always followed by
days of moody silence and a week or more of "lessons" in a tattered and
thumbed reader which the woodsman had brought up-river--lessons as
painful and laborious to Old Tom as they were delightful to the starved
mentality of the pupil. And Old Tom, the boy explained, was pretty
likely to be "lickered up fer quite a spell" after such a session which
invariably began with an exploration of the battered tin box.

The boy told Caleb of days and nights on the trail--boasted
unconsciously of Old Tom's super-cunning with trap and deadfall, and
even poison bait. And that brought him to the beautifully oiled bear
trap which he had left outside the door.

"I brung Samanthy along with me," he stated. "I brung her just because
somehow I kind-a thought mebby Old Tom'd be glad if I did. Next to me
he always sed he set a heap o' store on thet ole critter. He sed
Samanthy was as near to hevin' a woman around the house as anything he
knew on--she hed a voice like a steel trap, and when she got her teeth
sot in a argument she never did let up. I brung her along with me, and
the gun he give me, but I didn't take nuthin' else."

Caleb waited there until he knew that the boy had finished.

"You never bothered about that old tin box?" he inquired casually.

The boy shook his head again.

"Old Tom, whenever he went away for a spell, always sed I wan't to
meddle with it," he explained. "This time I reckoned his goin' was
just about the same thing, only he won't be comin' back, so I--I just
locked the box up in the cubberd and hitched the staple into the door
and come down myself."

By the time that meal was finished the boy's eyes were so heavy-lidded
that, fight as he would, they still persisted in drooping till the long
lashes curled over his cheeks. And in spite of Caleb's remonstrance it
was Sarah who saw him upstairs and into the huge guest-room with its
four-poster and high-boy and spindle-backed chairs.

When she came back downstairs her eyes were shining more than a little
and the flush upon her cheeks was undeniably rose. Her brother, from
his seat before the unlighted fireplace, puffed methodically upon his
pipe and barely lifted his head at her coming. He was deep in
meditation. She stood looking at him for a time from the foot of the
stairway.

"He's asleep," she began finally in a very little voice. "He fell
asleep almost before his cheek tou