"Yes, I know," said Mose, with hesitation; "but the old man here—that worries me."
"You just 'tend to your own knittin'," was the boy's reply. "Asa and me'll manage for ourselves all right."
Old Asa Whipple opened his eyes wide—not at surprise at hearing his Christian name fall so glibly from the boy's tongue, for that is the custom of the section, but with bewilderment at his meaning.
"What on earth are you drivin' at?" demanded Mose, no whit less puzzled.
"Well," said Job, with deliberation, "I've kind o' soured on that Teachout job of mine. I've had it in my mind to quit all along, when I got the chance, and I guess this is about as good as any. I've got along toward twenty dollars saved up, and there's three days' work a week for me at the cheese-factory whenever I want to take it, and I could go to school the other days, and both places are handier to git at from here than they are from Teachout's. So I'll rig up a bed and so on here, and I'll look out for the old man. But do you go ahead, and git out!"
It is another custom of these parts to be undemonstrative in the face of the unexpected.
Mose merely clapped his hand on Job's shoulder, and said, "You won't ever be sorry for it, sonny," which had much more of loose prediction than of pledge about it, yet seemed quite sufficient for them both.
The old man said nothing at all, but sat bending forward in his chair, his gaze fastened upon every move his son made about the room. For everything Mose did now spoke plainly of another parting, more sombre and sinister than the last. A soldier may come back, but how can one hope for the return of a deserter?
Mose's old instincts as a woodsman rose superior to the exigencies of a life and death flight. He prepared as if for a holiday camping jaunt into the wilderness—in a hurried manner, but forgetting nothing.
He made a pile of things on the table—all the powder and shot in the house, most of the salt, some old stockings, a tin cup, fork and spoon, and what matches he could find—and then stowed them away in flasks and his pockets, along with a whole tangled mass of lines, hooks and catgut fishing gear.