“We ain’t ketchin’ fish to sell,” he said to Ray, “but jist fer fun. You’ve got more’n we kin eat in two weeks, so give ’em a rest.”
When dinner was over there came a lazy lounging hour on the fir boughs in the warm sun, while Old Cy smoked his pipe of content.
Ray, however, could not resist the signal flags any longer, and as soon as the meal was eaten he was out tending them again.
When the sun was halfway down, again the happy trio broke camp and returned to the cabin, carrying fish enough to feed a multitude. That evening Old Cy told stories as usual, Ray picked his banjo and sang lively songs, and so ended Christmas in the wilderness.
Our lives are but a succession of moods, varying ever as our surroundings change; and so it was with Ray, isolated as he was with two old men for companions. With work or sport to interest him, he was cheerful and content. But when, as now happened, another long and heavy snowfall succeeded that mellow Christmas Day, he grew morose. It was selfish, perhaps, and thoughtless, as youth ever is, and yet not surprising; for when the sun shone again, they were practically buried under snow. It took an entire day, with all three working, to shovel paths to the lake and ice-house, and when that was done there was naught else except to cook and keep the fire going. A few days of this bore heavily on Ray’s spirits, and he became so glum that Old Cy took him to task.
“You’ve got to brace up, my boy,” he said one evening, “an’ likewise count yer blessin’s. We are shut up fer a spell, but think how much worse off ye might be. We’ve got plenty to eat ’n’ keep warm with, thar’s a good three hundred pounds o’ gum we got, an’ it’s worth over four hundred dollars, say nothin’ o’ the furs, ’n’ all yourn. Then, ’nother thing, ye mustn’t keep broodin’ over yer own lonesomeness so much. I’ll ’low ye’re kind o’ anxious to see the little gal ag’in, as is nat’ral; but s’pose it was two years ye hed to look forrard to, a-waitin’, an’ then on top o’ that, arter waitin’ so long, ye hed to face three more, with never a chance to larn whether she was dead or alive!”
And now Old Cy paused, and watched the low-burning fire as if living once more in bygone days.
“It seems a long time, these months,” he continued at last, glancing at Ray, “an’ so ’tis; but I had a longer spell on’t once, an’ it ended the way I hope your waitin’ won’t. It all happened more’n forty years ago, ’n’ I’ve never told nobody ’bout it since.
“I was born in Bayport, that’s a seaport town, an’ me ’n’ my only brother took to the sea at an arly age. We had sweethearts, too, and, curislike, they was sisters. Mine was Abbie Grey–sweet Abbie Grey they used to call her, an’ she well desarved it.
“Wal, I used to see her ’tween viages, mebbe a week or two, onct in six or twelve months o’ waitin’, an’ them was spells I’ve lived over hundreds o’ times, I kin tell ye. We ’greed to hitch up finally arter I made one more viage, ’n’ I went off, feelin’ life ahead was all apple orchards ’n’ sunshine.”