Haystack Thompson lay in bed making uncomplimentary remarks about the rain.
“It’s just took away the last chanct we had of following up that poor little mountain lass,” said he to his old clock. “If it hadn’t been for this tarnation storm I’d ’a’ tramped back to that there dell where I come on them two lasses making eyes at that rattler, and it would have been mighty funny if I couldn’t have found out something about what happened there.”
He reached out for his bag of tobacco, and filling his pipe and lighting it, tried to bring some cheer into his damp cabin by smoking very hard.
“I’d have gone over the whole ground,” he mused. “I’d ’a’ pretended I was walking on with that nice little Miss Carin, talking and smiling; I’d thought out how the other lass hung behind, looking at the trees and flowers, and I’d never have give up till I made out why she didn’t reach that church. But here we are, everything swept smooth as sandpaper with the storm!”
He fell to wishing that for once in his life there was some one to build the fire for him and get the breakfast.
“It’s lonesome business,” said he aloud, “being pa and ma and all the children just by yourself. Looks hoggish, now, don’t it? I wish I’d divided up and just been the man of the house, and let some other folks take the rest of the parts. I’m a no-count old fool, anyhow. No one but a plumb idiot would ’a’ let that there girl be snatched away like that yesterday. A blamed, sapless old fool, that’s what I be! Me with nothing but a fiddle to give me an excuse for living! For my farming would make you sick to look at. The neighbors snigger when they see it. Well, what do you think of that now, for a man to reach my age and have nothing but a fiddle that he cares for!”
He flung out of bed in disgust, whipped into his old clothes, lighted the fire—which proceeded to smoke badly—and got out his bacon and his bag of meal.
“I’m just plumb tired of cooking alone,” he announced to a squirrel that paused for a moment before his door, sitting erect on his haunches and casting a wistful glance from his bright eyes. Haystack tossed him some ground nuts which he kept in a bag for that purpose, and then turned angrily to his own meal. Halfway through it, he laid down his knife and fork, and a light broke over his face.
“I know what I’ll do,” he said, “I’ll go find that little lass. I’ll make myself of some use, that’s what I’ll do. See here, Betsy,” he went on, turning to his violin and speaking to it as if it were a little sister, “you and me’ll start out and find that there poor lass, you hear? We’ve been playing stick-in-the-mud about long enough. What we need is to get a move on us and to go out and see something of the world. What you say, Bet?”
Just then a log fell on the hearth, and from Betsy’s answering strings came forth a delicate wail. Haystack took it to mean that they should go, and when he had made his cabin tidy—and he took much more pains with it than usual—he put on clean homespun, packed a change of clothing in a square of blue denim, fastened this to a stick which he threw over his shoulder, and taking Betsy under the other arm, started out on a quest.