“Let me tell it,” said Bert. “We'd like to see you at our house this evening about five o'clock; can you come?”
“I reckon I can,” answered David. “Was that the good news you wanted to tell me?”
“No—I believe—yes, it was,” said Don, who received another fearful pinch on the arm and saw his brother looking at him in a very significant way. “You come up, anyhow.”
“We've got some work for you to do up there,” said Bert. “It will not pay you much at first, but perhaps you can make something out of it by-and-by. It will keep you busy for two or three weeks, perhaps longer. Will you come?”
David replied that he would, and turned away with an expression of surprise and disappointment on his face. The eager, almost excited manner in which Don greeted him, led him to hope that he had something very pleasant and encouraging to tell, and somehow he couldn't help thinking that his visitors had not said just what they intended to say when they first came up to the fence.
“What in the name of sense and Tom Walker was the matter with you, Bert?” demanded Don, as soon as the two were out of David's hearing. “My arm is all black and blue, I know!”
“I didn't want you to say too much,” was Bert's reply, “and I didn't know any other way to stop your talking. There was a listener close by.”
“A listener! Who was it?”
“David's brother. Just as you began speaking I happened to look toward the cabin, and saw through the cracks between the logs that the window on the other side was open. Close to one of those cracks, and directly in line with the window, was a head. I knew it was Dan's head the moment I saw it.”
“Aha!” exclaimed Don. “He had his trouble for his pains this time, hadn't he? Or, rather, he had the trouble and I had the pain,” he added, rubbing his arm.