“Why, David can’t help you,” replied his mother. “He has to work hard for everything he wears.”
“Can’t help me?” yelled Dan, “an’ him ’arnin’ a’most four hundred dollars a year! Ye don’t think no more of me in this house nor if I was a yaller dog. His credit is good at the store fur six months, kase I done heared Silas tell him so.”
But Dan didn’t speak to David about it, for his father spoke to him. When Godfrey came home that night he carried on his shoulder two axes, one of which looked as though it had just come out of the store. He put his own axe in the corner where it was usually kept, and with the new one in his hand he approached Dan’s chair. “Thar, sonny,” said he, cheerfully, “see what a nice present I brung ye. It’s the fust one I’ve give ye in a long time, aint it? Take hold on it. ’Twon’t hurt ye.”
“What shall I do with it, pap?” asked the boy, as he took the axe in both hands, holding it as awkwardly as though he had never touched one before.
“Wal, Dannie, I’ll tell ye,” replied Godfrey, placing his hand on his son’s shoulder and speaking in a confidential tone. “When the gen’ral found me loafin’ about in the woods like a lazy wagabone as I was, he says to me: ‘Godfrey,’ says he, ‘this is the principle we go on up to our house: them as don’t work can’t eat!’ I’ve thought of them words a heap of times since I come home, an’ I made up my mind that if rich folks do that way, poor folks had oughter, too. Now, I notus that yer amazin’ willin’ to set here in this yere cheer an’ warm yourself by the fire that Dave makes up every mornin’, an’ yer scandalous fond of drinkin’ the store-tea an’ coffee made outen the water that he brings from the spring; but I never seed ye cut no wood yerself nor tote no water. Now, sich doin’s as them won’t work in this yere house no longer. Ye’ve had a powerful long rest, an’ to-morrer mornin’ I want to see that thar new axe sharper’n a razor, so’t ye kin go with me an’ Dave to chop wood up to the gen’ral’s.”
Dan listened to this speech in silence, and could not muster up courage enough to make an impertinent reply, as he certainly would have done if his father had talked to him in this way a month before. But his father had never before talked to him in this way. If he had yelled and flourished his fists and jumped up and knocked his heels together, Dan would have met him half way; but he could not understand this quiet, earnest manner that Godfrey seemed to have fallen into of late. He didn’t like it either, for he was sure that it meant business. At any rate, the axe was sharpened that night with David’s assistance, and at daylight the next morning Dan might have been seen in company with his father and David wending his way toward the general’s wood lot.
Order having been rëestablished under Godfrey’s humble roof, and the Evans family being once more on the road to prosperity, the little settlement of Rochdale, which had been stirred from centre to circumference by the incidents, exciting and amusing, that we have attempted to describe in this series of books, once more fell back into its old habits, and peace and quietness reigned. The settlers, like so many hibernating animals, seemed to have crawled into their holes for their winter’s sleep, and only showed themselves to the world on mail-days, or when five long whistles announced that some steamer was about to touch at the landing. On these occasions it was remarked that two persons, who had never been known to miss a boat or a mail-day, no matter what the weather might be, were never seen at the landing now. They were Godfrey Evans and Dan. The latter, at first, would have been glad to resume his lazy habits, but his father kept him steadily at work, and at the end of the first week presented him with the money he had earned. This was a great encouragement to Dan, and from that time forward work was not quite so distasteful to him. Dan doesn’t hunt as much now as he did a few months ago, and neither does he own a breech-loading shot-gun; but he is a thrifty, hard-working boy, and has placed a very nice little sum of money in Don Gordon’s hands for safe-keeping, besides refunding that ten dollars, the loss of which had occasioned David so much trouble and anxiety.
As for Godfrey, there was no sham about his reformation. He went to work in earnest to make amends for the long years he had spent in idleness, and, in order that he might begin right, he told the general the story of that highway robbery, and handed over to him the first twenty dollars he could save out of his earnings, with the request that it might be forwarded to Clarence Gordon’s father. Then he breathed easier. He felt as if a mountain had been removed from his shoulders.
Don and Bert Gordon kept on the even tenor of their way, and, having seen David established as mail carrier, set to work, with the assistance of Fred and Joe Packard, to build another shooting-box on the site of the one that was burned by Lester Brigham and Bob Owens. They knew now that it was not Godfrey Evans who set fire to it, for their father told them so: but he did not tell them who the guilty ones were, and they never tried to find out. The new shooting-box was finished in a week’s time, and, as Don had predicted, it threw the old one far into the shade. Lester Brigham went over there one night to look at it, but he left it just as he found it. Lester was not the boy he was once. He was as much alone in the world as though there had not been another youth of his age within a hundred miles of him. How he passed his time no one knew or cared to ask. He often thought of his old friend, Bob Owens, and wondered what had become of him. Of course everybody knew that he had run away from home, but no one dreamed that he took David’s money with him when he went. The general impression seemed to be that Godfrey and Dan could produce it at any moment, if they saw fit to do so.
David faithfully fulfilled the duties of mail carrier during the winter, and at the end of six months he was all out of debt, and had a nice little sum of money laid by for a rainy day. One morning he rode down to the post-office after the mail that was to be carried to the county-seat, and Silas Jones handed him the following note, which he read as he galloped along: