“Can you spare me a little time now?”
“As well as not.” He motioned her to a seat on a fallen log.
“This is good,” said Agnes. “I would rather talk out here. I love to be out of doors. This is a beautiful country, and I don’t wonder that my grandfather settled here. It is about my grandfather that I want to talk, Uncle Dod. You knew him?”
“So he was your grandfather? Yes, I knew him well. We were good friends when he came out here nigh to forty year ago. If you think it’s wild now, what would you have thought it then? You oughter hev seen it, not a path but what the Injuns made, and skeerce a neighbor for twenty mile. Them was real pioneer times. These ain’t shucks to ’em, though the folks at come out from the east think they’re gittin’ into the heart of the forest. They’re too many comin’ to call it wild now.”
“I can’t imagine it much wilder,” said Agnes, “though it is much more settled here than off yonder, where we first went. You knew of my grandfather’s first marriage?”
Dod Hunter looked at her askance before he proceeded. “Yes, I knew.”
“Tell me, please. Do you know, we never dreamed of such a thing. If mother knew, she never told me.”
“She didn’t know. He didn’t mean she should.”
“She always thought she was grandfather’s only child. Please tell me all you know about it. I have heard Humphrey Muirhead’s story, and I would like to hear yours.”
“Well, it was this way. Your grandfather came out here in the airly days, as I told you. Wanted adventure, I suppose. He got it, plenty of it. One day when he was out hunting, he got hurt and was carried to Doyle’s. Ellen nursed him. She was a pretty girl, wild as a hawk, high tempered, independent, and—well, she did about as she pleased always; and she got tired of Humphrey Muirhead after a while—liked her father’s home better, and left her husband because it pleased her to. They wa’n’t nothing but children, the pair of ’em, at best. He would have taken her back, but she wouldn’t go and raised Cain generally. She died when the boy was about five year old. He was well rid of her, and after a year he married your grandmother. Ellen’s people kept the boy, but your grandfather supported him and would have done well by him if he’d been let.”