"Then what did you mean by saying we reckoned our canoe was too full?"

"Wasn't that our idea?" returned the Left Bower, indifferently.
Confounded by this practical expression of his own unformulated good
intentions, the Right Bower was staggered.

"Speakin' of the Old Man," broke in the Judge, with characteristic
infelicity, "I reckon he'll sort o' miss us, times like these. We were
allers runnin' him and bedevilin' him, after work, just to get him
excited and amusin', and he'll kinder miss that sort o' stimulatin'. I
reckon we'll miss it too, somewhat. Don't you remember, boys, the night
we put up that little sell on him and made him believe we'd struck it
rich in the bank of the creek, and got him so conceited, he wanted to go
off and settle all our debts at once?"

"And how I came bustin' into the cabin with a pan full of iron pyrites
and black sand," chuckled Union Mills, continuing the reminiscences,
"and how them big gray eyes of his nearly bulged out of his head. Well,
it's some satisfaction to know we did our duty by the young fellow even
in those little things." He turned for confirmation of their general
disinterestedness to the Right Bower, but he was already striding away,
uneasily conscious of the lazy following of the Left Bower, like a
laggard conscience at his back. This movement again threw Union Mills
and the Judge into feeble complicity in the rear, as the procession
slowly straggled homeward from the creek.

Night had fallen. Their way lay through the shadow of Lone Star
Mountain, deepened here and there by the slight, bosky ridges that,
starting from its base, crept across the plain like vast roots of its
swelling trunk. The shadows were growing blacker as the moon began to
assert itself over the rest of the valley, when the Right Bower halted
suddenly on one of these ridges. The Left Bower lounged up to him, and
stopped also, while the two others came up and completed the group.

"There's no light in the shanty," said the Right Bower in a low voice,
half to himself and, half in answer to their inquiring attitude. The men
followed the direction of his finger. In the distance the black outline
of the Lone Star cabin stood out distinctly in the illumined space.
There was the blank, sightless, external glitter of moonlight on its two
windows that seemed to reflect its dim vacancy, empty alike of light,
and warmth, and motion.

"That's sing'lar," said the Judge in an awed whisper.

The Left B