Joe nodded.
“Reminds me of Hite Pitcomb the time he fell through Hank Jenkins’s sawpit. Thar wa’n’t a spot on him big’s your hand, that Doc Haines didn’t stick a plaster on. Let’s see, got yer gripsack?” and glancing at the big pigskin bag beside Joe, he slung the trunk on his back, Joe following him to the waiting team.
As Ed tucked the yellow horse-blanket snugly around Joe’s knees and picked up the lines, his keen blue eyes looked him quizzically over.
“Lookin’ kinder peaked ’round the gills, ain’t ye?” he remarked, as he clucked to the horses. “Wall, you’ll git over that, soon’s we git to camp—gee up!”
The team started for Keene Valley at a brisk trot.
“If I’d a-knowed you was a-comin’, I’d er fixed up my old lean-to to the head of the pond—roof was leakin’ bad last time I come by thar—a feller’d git kinder moist, as the feller said, if it come on to rain.”
As the springy old buckboard rattled on, the rare mountain air, pungent with the perfume of balsam and pine, sent a glow to Joe’s cheeks. He drew a deep, long, delicious breath.
“That’s what I want,” he cried, with his old breezy enthusiasm, “and plenty of it! Whew! What air, Ed!”
“Help yerself, friend, it’s all free,” returned his companion.
The two talked on—Joe plying his old friend with a score of questions. “Eph Hammond’s girl got married,” he learned. “Yes, yes—run off with the drug-store feller down to Alder Brook. Old Man Stimson was dead at last. Jim Oldfield had cut himself bad with an axe, over to Lily Pond—but deer were plenty, and the still water at the head of the Upper Ausable Pond was chock full of trout.”