"You don't need it. You are able to help yourself, because you have no one else to look out for."
"Then I won't help you, neither. You want to keep a close watch over that shanty of your'n, or the first thing you know, you will come back to it some dark, cold night, almost froze to death, and it won't be there."
Joe walked off without making any reply, and Dan stood shaking his fists at him until he disappeared. Then he turned about to find himself face to face with his father, to whom he told his story, not forgetting to make a few artful additions, which he hoped would have the effect of making the ferryman as angry at Joe as he was himself.
A disinterested listener would have thought that Joe was the meanest brother any fellow ever had, and that Dan was deserving of better treatment at his hands.
"Now, I just want you to tell me what you think of that," said Dan, as he brought his highly-seasoned narrative to a close. "He's a most scandalous stingy chap, that Joe of our'n is. He wants to keep his good things all to himself. And—would you believe it, pap, if I didn't tell you?—he said he would as soon shoot your dog or mine as look at 'em, and that if we come fooling around where he was, he'd have us tooken up, sure pop."
Silas Morgan's eyes flashed, and an angry scowl settled on his swarthy face.
Dan was succeeding famously in his efforts to arouse his father's ire against the unoffending Joe—at least he thought so—and he hoped to increase it until it broke out into some violent demonstration.
"Them's his very words, pap," continued Dan, with unblushing mendacity. "Since he took up with that rich man awhile ago, he has outgrowed his clothes, and me and you ain't good enough for him. Me and Joe could have had just the nicest kind of times up there in the woods, and by doing a little extry work on the sly, we could have snared enough of old man Warren's birds, and Hal—um!"
Dan caught his breath just in time. He was about to say that he and Joe could have snared enough of Mr. Warren's birds and Hallet's to run the amount of their joint earnings up to two hundred dollars; but he suddenly remembered that his father was not yet aware that Mr. Hallet's covers had been freshly stocked, and that that was a matter that was to be kept from his knowledge, so that Dan could have the field to himself.
But the ferryman was quick to catch some things, if he was dull in comprehending others, and Dan had inadvertently given him an idea to ponder over at his leisure.