Finding that the door was fastened on the inside, Dan came around the corner, and looked in at the window.
"Say, pap," he whispered excitedly, "dog-gone my buttons, what did you go and lock yourself up for? Think somebody was about to steal all the gold dishes? Open up, quick! Here's a go—two of 'em."
Although the ferryman heartily wished Dan a thousand miles away, he complied with this peremptory demand for admission, whereupon the boy stepped quickly across the threshold and locked the door behind him.
"Say, pap," he continued, in a hurried whisper, "don't it beat the world how some folks can make money without ever trying? Now, there's that Joe of our'n. He don't never seem to do much of nothing but just loaf around in the woods with them city fellers that come up here to show their fine guns, and yet he's always got money. He takes mighty good care to keep it hid, too, 'cause I can't never find none of it."
"Is that all you've got to say?" exclaimed Silas impatiently. "I know it as well as you do."
"Well, it ain't all I've got to say, neither," replied Dan. "I've got a heap more, if you will only let me tell you. Old man Warren is out there talking with Joe now. You remember them blue-headed birds you killed for him last year, don't you?"
"Them English partridges?" said Silas with a grin. "I ain't forgot 'em. Old man Warren offered me ten dollars a month if I wouldn't shoot over his grounds, 'cause he wanted them birds pertected till there were lots of 'em; but I wouldn't agree to nothing of the kind. He brung them birds from England on purpose to stock his covers with. They cost him six dollars a pair, and I made more'n forty dollars out of 'em. Well, what of it? I don't care for such trifling things any more."
"Well," answered Dan, "he's gone and got more of them to take the place of them you shot—old man Warren has—a hundred pair of 'em—six hundred dollars worth, and—"
"Ah! that makes it different," said Silas, rubbing his hands and looking up at his old muzzle-loader, which rested on a couple of wooden hooks over the door. "It's true that six hundred dollars ain't no great shakes of money to a man who—hum! But still I am obliged to old Warren. They won't bring me in no such sum as that, them birds won't, but they'll be worth a dollar a brace this season easy enough, and that'll pay me for the trouble I'll have in shooting them. Ain't I going to make a power of money this winter?"