“I want you to ‘ride’ a load of wood to the house. The ‘boys’ have gone off to a beer dance, and I’m short-handed. The wood is cut and shaped.”
“But I’m goin’ a fishin’. Lemme see. It’s full moon next week. Well I’ll come along.”
He coiled up his line, stowed it away in his skin bag, locked his door, and climbed in. Next morning the old chap went off with the wagon for the wood, and returned late at night. He had a peculiar way of humming to himself whenever he was pleased, and I caught the sound as he came in through the kitchen to the dining-room, where the evening meal was on the table. With a nod to me, he sat down to a hearty meal, then, filling his pipe, he leant back and laughed silently.
“Seen anything, Uncle?”
“I don’t know that I have seed anythin’ outer the common, but I’ve learnt somethin’ that’s given me a better understandin’ o’ the spread o’ kindness overlaying things.”
“What was that?”
“You know where the wood were stacked?”
I knew the place very well, for that brute of a tiger had killed a foal there only two days before, and I had directed Abe there in the hope that he would drop across its tracks.
The old man, still chuckling, went out of the room and returned with a long bamboo whip-stick, deprived, however, of the twenty-foot thong made from buffalo hide.
“What’s become of the thong?” I cried.