Ah, if the bark-mill, and the old mule, and the tan-pit, and the wood-pile, and the cornfield might testify!
“Fifty cents a day - eh?” said the stranger.
At the repetition of the sum, it occurred to Birt, growing more familiar with the eccentricity of his companion, that he ought not in sheer silliness to throw away a chance for employment.
“Kin I ask my mother?” he said dubiously.
“By all means ask your mother,” replied the stranger heartily.
Birt’s last fantastic doubt vanished. Oh no! this was not Satan in disguise. When did the enemy ever counsel a boy to ask his mother!
Birt still stared gravely at him. All the details of his garb, manner, speech, even the hammer in his hand, were foreign to the boy’s experience.
Presently he ventured a question. “Do you-uns hail from hyar-abouts?”
The stranger was frank and communicative. He told Birt that he was a professor of Natural Science in a college in one of the “valley towns,” and that he was sojourning, for his health’s sake, at a little watering-place some twelve miles distant on the bench of the mountain. Occasionally he made an excursion into the range, which was peculiarly interesting geologically.
“But what I wish you to do is to dig for - bones.”