“Three an’ a half, pop,” was the reply, and Dan began to look wild, and arose rather hastily from the log. There was something in the tone in which this question was propounded that made him fear that the storm he had quelled a short time before, was gathering again; but his father’s next words reassured him.
“Yer a good son, Dannie,” said Godfrey. “An’ that’s the way to get rich, that ar way is. Take money when ye can get it, an’ keep it, too; mind that, Dannie. Don’t go to throwin’ it about loose an’ reckless, but hold fast to it with sich a grip that nothin’ can’t make ye let up. Ye didn’t spend none of it at the landin’, I hope?”
“No, I didn’t. Didn’t I tell ye that I brung every cent of it hum?”
“That’s a good boy,” said Godfrey; and having set his fears at rest, he became silent again and puffed at his pipe until he was called to supper. When the meal was over, he went back to his pipe again; Dan made a pretence of chopping wood; while David assisted his mother in her household duties. It began to grow dark at last, and then Dan threw down his axe and seated himself beside his father who was nodding on the bench.
“Say, pop, be we goin’ to look fur that bar’l to-night?” he asked.
“No, Dannie, we hain’t,” was the sleepy reply. “I can’t. Here I’ve been an’ hoofed it down to the landin’ an’ back since dinner, an’ I’m jest teetotally tuckered out. Wait till to-morrow an’ then we’ll go!”
Dan was surprised at this answer. He was tired himself, but the prospect of digging up eighty thousand dollars in gold and silver, would have put life and energy into him if he had been completely exhausted. He attributed his father’s refusal to his inherent laziness; but something he discovered the next morning showed him that he was wrong there.
The evening was passed in much the same manner that every evening was passed under Godfrey’s roof. There were no candles to light the hovel, and even if there had been there were no books or papers to read, no games or anything else to engage in to make the time pass pleasantly. In one corner of the cabin beside the fire-place was a pile of resinous knots which David had picked up in the woods. One of these was occasionally placed on the coals, and while it blazed up and threw a feeble light about the room, David and his mother talked of the past and speculated concerning the future. This was the way David’s education had always been conducted. The remembrance of these evening interviews with his mother went through life with him, and the moral lessons that were then inculcated stood him in good hand in after years.
Dan and his father had their own peculiar ways of putting in the time that elapsed between the cleaning away of the supper dishes and the hour for retiring. Dan always stretched himself out on the floor and went to sleep, while his father nodded on the bench outside the door. On this particular evening Godfrey did not seem to slumber very heavily for every now and then he would straighten up and look steadily toward the corner in which Dan lay. He appeared to be waiting for something. It came at last in the shape of a gentle snore, and then Godfrey arose and stole away in the darkness. A few minutes later he came back, and taking possession of the miserable “shake down” he called a bed, was soon sound asleep.