When they turned the bend above, they were delighted to see that Adam was right, and that John Brewer’s house was really there. It was not much of a house, for it was a frame building, one story high, and containing three or four rooms; but it had an air of human habitation about it which was very welcome to the wanderers. It stood in a small clearing, and John Brewer, a little man, with long, brown hair, which looked as if the wind had been blowing it in several directions during the night, came out of his front door to meet them. Two of his children followed him, and the three others and his wife looked out of a half-opened window.
Mr. Brewer was mildly surprised to see his old acquaintance, Adam, and the three boys, and when he had heard their story, he took a kind but languid interest in the matter, and went into the house to see about getting breakfast.
It was not long before our friends were sitting down to a plentiful meal of coffee, corn-bread, and very tough bacon, Mr. Brewer and his family standing at the end of the table and gazing at them as they ate. Some of them would have joined the breakfast-party had there been plates and cups enough.
About half an hour after breakfast, as our friends, with Mr. Brewer and four of the children, were sitting in the shade in front of the house, and Mrs. Brewer and the other child were looking at them behind a half-opened window-shutter, Adam remarked,—
“What I want to know is what chance we have of gettin’ up the river to Titusville?”
“How did you expect to get up?” asked Mr. Brewer.
“Well,” said Adam, “I thought we might get passage in a mail-boat, if one happened to come along at the right time; and if it didn’t, I thought there’d be some boat or other goin’ up the river to-day that would take us.”
“Well, if them’s your kalkerlations,” said Mr. Brewer, gently rubbing his knees and looking out over the water, “I don’t think you’re going to get up at all.”
“Not get up at all!” cried the boys; and Adam looked puzzled.
“Well, not for a week or so, anyway,” said Mr. Brewer, his eyes still fixed upon the rippling waters. “To be sure, the mail-boat will be along to-day, and she’ll stop if she’s hailed, but she can’t carry you all, and as for other boats, the long and short of it is, there ain’t none gone down, and there can’t none come up. There was a boat went up yesterday with vegetables from Lake Worth, but she won’t be back for a week, and then it’ll be a good while before she goes up again. Every boat that’s been down the river this month has gone up, and they tell me there ain’t nothin’ at Jupiter but the little sloop that belongs to the light-house keeper, and she’s hauled up to have a new mast put in her.”