Asa Whipple and the deputy marshal gazed in a dumbfounded way at each other through a cruel minute of silence, broken only by the echoing strokes of Job's axe out in the undergrowth beyond. It was the third man who first found his tongue; and Asa, looking dumbly at him, saw that he was no other than Nelse Hornbeck.
"Downright cur'ous that we should 'a' happened to hit on you like this, ain't it?" Nelse began. "If we'd ben tryin' to find you, we'd never 'a' done it in this born world! Norm and me, you see, we've ben fishin' up Panther River three days, and then we followed up the South Branch outlet, and I'd ben figgerin' on makin' a camp by the lake there, an' workin' down the other branch; but the flies were pretty bad, and Norm here, he took a fancy to this 'ere outlet, and our oil of tar was about give out, and so I——"
"Oh, shut up!" broke in the deputy marshal, impatiently. "Look here, Asa Whipple, is that straight what you're telling me—that Mose has started off to give himself up?"
The old man rose from the log and stood erect. He had never seemed so tall before in his life, and he looked down upon the more lithe and sinewy figure of the deputy marshal almost haughtily.
"No, not to give himself up. 'To jine his regiment,' was what I said."
Norman Hazzard snorted out an angry laugh.
"Were there ever two such simpletons under one roof?" he cried. "'Jine his regiment!' Why, man, I tell you, they'll simply take him and shoot him! They can't do anything else, even if they wanted to. That's the regulations. He can't jine anything, except what the newspapers call the 'silent majority.' Do you mean to tell me—a man of your age—you didn't know that?"
"All I know is," said Asa, doggedly, "that Mose seen his duty, and he done it. He left his regiment because there was nothin' doin', and some mean Dutchman who had a spite agin him wouldn't let him git a furlough, and he was scairt to death about me,—and you know as well as I do that if he hadn't come just as he did I'd been a gone coon,—and then he come off up in here, and we follered him, and there was so much to do, fixin' up this new place, that we hadn't time to do much thinkin' about what was right and what was wrong till only this mornin' I happened to git hold o' that paper there, and it seems the war's about ten times worse than ever, and when Mose came in and I showed it to him, and he read it through, he jest give me a look, and says he, 'You're right. I ain't got no business here. I'm off.' And off he went. That's all; and I'm proud of him."
The deputy marshal groaned. "Don't I tell you they won't have him? The minute they lay eyes on him he's a dead man. I don't believe the President himself could save him."
"Why don't you save him yourself?" put in a new voice, abruptly.