“I do not see it,” said Dallas; “we made both.”
“Yes; but the first was when we were ’prentices, the second was when we had served our time.”
The speaker laughed as he said this; and as it happened, it was on the second day after that he pointed with something like triumph to some newly cut and trimmed young pieces of pine-trunk notched in a peculiar way, cast up among some rocks on the shores of the little lake they were crossing.
“That’s the end of ’em, my sons,” he said.
“Oh, no; any one may have cut down those trees.”
“For sartain, my son; but I nailed ’em together, for there’s one of my spikes still sticking in. Good nail, too; see how it’s twisted and bent.”
This seemed unanswerable, but neither Abel nor Dallas was convinced.
“They may have swum ashore,” Abel said to his cousin, as they lay down to sleep that night.
“Yes,” said Dallas, “and I shall hold to Bob’s proverb about those born to be hanged.”