“By hickory!” expostulated the father, “what do you think of that?”
“What do I think? It’s just what I expected, that’s all.”
Boy lifted the window and leaned out. The moon was flooding the outer world with a soft radiance. The bark of a wolf came faintly to his ears from the back ridges. Old Joe lay stretched in the moonlight beside the ash-leach. As Boy watched him the dog arose, shook himself happily, turned three times around, and lay down again. An owl hooted mournful maledictions from a neighboring thicket, and in the nearby coop the fowl stirred and nestled down again, heads beneath wings. Boy came back and stood beside his father.
“I guess maybe I’m selfish, dad,” he said slowly. “It isn’t for me to say what I think, although it’s mighty good of you to ask. This place ain’t mine; it’s yours. You’ve worked hard and long to clear what you’ve cleared here, and that’s a great deal more than any of the other Bushwhackers have done. I haven’t been anythin’ of a help to you much. ’Course I could be from now on. I’m a man growed, nearly, and as soon as the trappin’ is over I might pitch in and help you with the loggin’.”
The father laid his pipe down on the table and combed his long beard with his fingers.
“Boy,” he said, “every hanged stick of timber and every foot of this four hundred acres of bushland is as much yours as mine, and you know it. I ain’t wantin’ to clear the land any more than the rest of the Bushwhackers are. What do I want with cleared land? Gosh sakes alive, I’d be so lonesome for the woods that I couldn’t live. I can’t sleep now if I don’t hear the trees swishin’ and the twigs poundin’ the roof nights. And ain’t we tolerably happy, all of us together here, even if the little ma is purty sick and it’s mighty hard not to be able to help her? And ain’t we hopin’ and prayin’ that she’ll get to be her old self once more, here where the woods breathes its own medicine? And don’t we know them prayers’ll be answered?”
He bent over and laid his big hand on the lad’s shoulder.
“Then we’ll naturally put in some great nights, crackin’ hickory-nuts by the fire and playin’ the fiddle. Why, I wouldn’t part with one acre of this piece of bush for all the cleared land in western Ontario.”
Boy stooped and picked up the letter.
“Watson writes that he has a cultivated farm near Clearview that he’ll swap for this of ours,” he said. “Where’s Clearview, dad?”