“Never mind. I'm here now,” said Nan, brightly. “And I want you to show me your house and introduce me to Mrs. Vanderwiller.”
“Sure. My ol' woman will be glad to see ye,” said the man, briskly. “'Tain't more'n a mile furder on.”
But first they came to a deserted place, a strip more than half a mile wide, where the trees had been cut in a broad belt through the swamp. All Nan could see was sawdust and the stumps of felled trees sticking out of it. The sawdust, Toby said, was anywhere from two to twenty feet deep, and there were acres of it.
“They had their mill here, ye kin see the brick work yonder. They hauled out the lumber by teams past my place. The stea'mill was here more'n two years. They hauled the sawdust out of the way and dumped it in ev'ry holler, jest as it come handy.”
“What a lot there is of it!” murmured Nan, sniffing doubtfully at the rather unpleasant odor of the sawdust.
“I wish't 'twas somewhere else,” grunted Toby.
“Why-so?”
“Fire git in it and it'd burn till doomsday. Fire in sawdust is a mighty bad thing. Ye see, even the road here is made of sawdust, four foot or more deep and packed as solid as a brick walk. That's the way Pale Lick went, sawdust afire. Ha'f the town was built on sawdust foundation an' she smouldered for weeks before they knowed of it. Then come erlong a big wind and started the blaze to the surface.”
“Oh!” murmured Nan, much interested. “Didn't my Uncle Henry live there then?”
“I sh'd say he did,” returned Toby, emphatically. “Didn't he never tell ye about it?”