“No.”
“Then he’ll go.”
She passed from the room, and Boy sat huddled before the table, his head in his hands, his eyes fastened upon the guns hanging on the wall. From the shadows Big McTavish’s fiddle was wailing “Ye Banks and Braes.” The fire died and the long-armed shadows reached and groped about the room, touching the dried venison strips and the hams and bacon hanging from the ceiling, glancing from the oily green hides stretched for curing on the walls, hovering above the bundles of pelts and piles of traps in the corners of the room. But Boy’s mind was not on the trapping activities that soon would bestir the times once more. In his soul he was pondering over the question of his new unrest: a question which must be answered sooner or later by somebody.
CHAPTER III
The Babes in the Wood
The father arose and hung the fiddle on its nail.
“Best go to bed, Boy,” he yawned, picking up the huge clasp-knife with which he had been shaping the ax-handle and putting it in his pocket. When he withdrew his hand it held a letter.
“Well, now, if I didn’t forget all about this here epistle,” he exclaimed, frowning. “Jim Peeler gave it to me this afternoon. That man Watson, the land-agent at Bridgetown, gave it to Jim to give me. You read it, Boy, and see what he wants.”
Boy took the letter and broke it open with nervous fingers.
“Watson says he’s comin’ over here to see you to-morrow, dad. Seems like he wants to get hold of this place.”
He threw the letter from him and walked over to the window.