“I did not expect you for an hour and a half, as you had to get a grist ground, and the horses shod, and one of them shod all round.”
“Everything worked just as well as it could. There was no grist in the mill, and Mr. Lunt turned our corn right up. I took the horses right to the blacksmith’s and found Joe Bemis sitting on the anvil smoking his pipe. Wasn’t I glad! So he went right at the horses. When I got back James had carried in every bag of the wheat, and the grist was in the wagon, and all we had to do was to feed the horses, eat ourselves, and start. Mother Whitman, we found the prettiest place to eat! a little cleft in the rocks, a birch tree growing out of it. Father, a bag of wheat is just nothing to James, he’s awful strong.”
“What did Mr. Lunt say to him?”
“Don’t you think he didn’t know him?”
“Didn’t know him?”
“No, sir; and asked me who that man was with the team; and when I told him it was the redemptioner you had of Mr. Wilson he wouldn’t believe it for ever so long, and said he didn’t look like the same man. No, he don’t father; he gets up and sits down quicker, and he was just pale, but now there’s a little red spot in the middle of each cheek. His cheeks were hollow and the skin was drawn tight over the bone, and looked all glossy, same as the bark on a young apple-tree where the sheep rub against it in the spring. He looked kinder,—what is it you call it mother, when you talk about sick folks?”
“Emaciated?”
“That’s it; he looked emaciated but he don’t now.”
“How did you find the road?”
“They have been working on the road in the Showdy district, and it was very bad, and the worst hills are there, too.