Entering the house that we had left vacant, save for the sleeping child in the bed-room, we were startled at sight of a dusky, silent figure, sitting motionless before the fire—for, in the mountain country, a blaze is always welcome after night-fall, even in midsummer. At the sound of our approaching footsteps the figure turned toward us a head crowned with white wool, and smiled benignly.
“Joe!” we both cried, in a breath.
“Joe I is!” returned the old man, placidly, stretching his gnarled hands toward the blaze, and grinning delightedly; “I reckon you all begin fur to projec’ ‘Whar’s Joe?’ long ’bout dish yer time o’ day, so I done p’inted my tracks in dish yer way.”
“It must have been you that Guard was barking at,” I said, stirring the fire into a brighter blaze.
“No; hit wa’nt me. I yeard his racketin’ as I come up along. Hit war’ some udder varmint, I reckons. What fur he want ter bark at me?”
“True enough. Well, we’re just awful glad you’ve come back, Joe,” Jessie told him. “Leslie has been out all the afternoon and she hasn’t had her supper. I waited for her before eating mine, so now I’ll fix yours on this little table beside the fire and we can all eat at the same time.”
Joe accepted the proposition thankfully, and, after seeing him comfortably established, we seated ourselves at the large table near the window. I was hungry after my long ride and fell to with a will, but I presently observed that Jessie ate nothing.
“Why don’t you eat your supper, Jessie?”
“I can’t,” she replied, pushing away her plate; “I’m so worried. Leslie, have you thought that if the agent refuses to issue a deed to us we shall have no home? I feel just sure of it, for we haven’t money enough to re-enter the claim, hire a surveyor, and all that.”