“Then I’ll sit down and wait.” Tarboe made for the verandah.
Denzil presently trotted after and said: “I’d like a word with you.”
Tarboe turned round. “Well, what have you got to say?”
“Better be said in my house, not here,” replied Denzil. His face was pale, but there was fire in his eyes. There was no danger of violence, and, if there were, Tarboe could deal with it. Why should there be violence? Why should that semi-insanity in Denzil’s eyes disturb him? The one thing to do was to forge ahead. He nodded.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked presently, as they passed through the gate.
“To my little house by the Three Trees. I’ve got things I’d like to show you, and there’s some things I’d like to say. You are a big hulk of a man, and I’m nobody, but yet I’ve been close to you and yours in my time—that’s so, for sure.”
“You’ve been close to me and mine in your time, eh? I didn’t know that.”
“No, you didn’t know it. Nobody knew it—I’ve kept it to myself. Your family wasn’t all first-class—but no.”
They soon reached the plain board-house, with the well-laid foundation of stone, by the big Three Trees. Inside the little spare, undecorated room, Tarboe looked round. It was all quiet and still enough. It was like a lodge in the wilderness. Somehow, the atmosphere of it made him feel apart and lonely. Perhaps that was a little due to the timbered ceiling, to the walls with cedar scantlings showing, to the crude look of everything-the head of a moose, the skins hanging down the sides of the walls, the smell of the cedar, and the swift movement of a tame red squirrel, which ran up the walls and over the floor and along the chimney-piece, for Denzil avoided the iron stove so common in these new cold lands, and remained faithful to a huge old-fashioned mantel.
Presently Denzil faced him, having closed the door. “I said I’d been near to your family and you didn’t believe me. Sit down, please to, and I’ll tell you my story.”