“Time Big McTavish had his last loggin’-bee he sent for me to come and help with the cookin’,” said the widow, as she poured the foaming milk from the pail into the big earthen bowls. “I made a custard in the dishpan. There was forty-two eggs in it, and it was good, if I do say it myself. Not one man in the lot of ’em that set down to the table but asked for a second helpin’. Big Mac he told ’em all who made it, and since that I’ve liked him better than ever. I’m makin’ another just like it for Mrs. Declute, and if you’re at Declute’s loggin’-bee next Thursday you’ll be able to sample it. Big McTavish says that Ander’s loggin’ ’ll be a good ’un, all right, if I make a custard for it.”
“He’s one man in five hundred, marm, is Big Mac,” answered Bill. “Why, Mrs. Ross, there’s not an Injun in the bush, no, or on the Point either, who wouldn’t fight tooth-and-nail for him. He’s been mighty good to the Injuns, has Mac. Any time they want anythin’ he has, they go to him and get it. And Gloss, why she can simply tie them Injuns about her little finger. They all think the world of her.”
“I’d like to know who don’t think the world of Gloss. She’s a dear girl—bless her sweet face.”
Bill with a spoonful of milk-soaked bread well on the way to its destination, suspended operations for a moment.
“Widder Ross,” he said, “God never made a better girl, nor a better lookin’ one, unless it was your Mary Ann.”
His repast finished, he reached for his rifle.
“Must be goin’,” he said in answer to the widow’s invitation to ‘set longer.’ “I’ll call in on you again soon, widder. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” responded the woman.
She was lighting her clay pipe and did not so much as turn as Bill walked out.
Paisley skirted the scrubby walk and passed along the edge of the butternut grove toward the path across the fallow. A whip-poor-will was voicing its joys from the limb of a dead ash. The moon had sunk above the bay, and its wide splash of light lay across the fallow, a blanket of milky haze. Bill lifted his head and breathed in the clear wood-scented air. From the valley came the monotonous buzz of a saw. Suddenly Paisley dived into the hazel thicket. He had heard footsteps approaching, and rightly divined that it was the teacher and Mary Ann.