“For the simple reason that you are not Indians—savages, my lad. Do you know that if you did as you propose, some night you would have to climb for your life, and cling in the branches of a huge pine, while the flooded river swept away your hut.”
“Don’t sweep away your huts,” said Esau, sulkily.
“Because they are two hundred feet above the river. Well, what are you going to do?”
“Start back again, sir, at once,” I replied.
“And then?”
“Try to get work somewhere.”
“And what am I to say to my sister and her husband when they come?”
“That we found out we had made a mistake, sir, and had set to work at once to try and remedy it.”
“You will sleep here to-night though, of course?”
I looked at Esau, and his eyes flashed back my opinion.