The man had two alert and wide-awake companions, and they were a brace of finely-bred Gordon setters, which, after beating the bushes on both sides of the road in the vain effort to put up a grouse or start a hare, now came in, and lay down near the wagon.
They were a sight for a sportsman's eye, and that same sportsman would very naturally ask himself how it came that this poverty-stricken fellow could afford to own dogs that would have won honors at any bench-show in the land.
"Yes, I reckon them dog-brutes air just about nice," Silas said, whenever any inquisitive person propounded this inquiry to him, "and they were given to me for a present by a couple of city shooters who once hired me for a guide. You see, birds of all sorts, and 'specially woodcock, was mighty skeerce that year, but I took 'em where there was a little bunch that I was a saving for my own shooting, and they had the biggest kind of sport. They give me them dogs in consequence of my perliteness to 'em."
There was no one in the neighborhood who could dispute this story, but there were those who took note of the fact that at certain times the dogs disappeared as completely as though they had never existed, and that they were never seen when there were any strange sportsmen in the vicinity.
"The luck that comes to different folks in this world is just a trifle the beatenest thing that I ever heared tell on," continued Silas, leaning heavily upon the wood-rack and fanning his flushed face with his brimless straw hat. "I can think and plan, but it don't bring in no money, like it does for some folks that ain't got nigh as much sense as I have. Now, there's them two setter dogs that was accidentally left on my hands last year! I thought sure that I'd make my everlasting fortune out of them; but if there's been a reward offered for their safe return to their master, I never seen or heared of it. I've tried every way I can think of to make something, so't things in and around my house won't look so sorter peaked and poor, but I'm as fur from hitting the mark now as I was ten year ago. I wish I could think up some way to make a strike, but I can't; and so here goes for that wood-pile. It won't always be as hot as it is to-day. Winter will be here before long, the roads will be blocked with drifts, and if this wood ain't down to the beach directly, me and the ole woman will have to shiver over a bare hearth."
With this reflection to put life and energy into him, Silas straightened up and turned toward the wood-pile with slow and reluctant steps, all unconscious of the fact that every move he made was closely watched by two recumbent figures, who, snugly concealed by a thicket of evergreens, a short distance away, had distinctly caught every word of his soliloquy.
The dogs knew they were there, for they had run upon their hiding-place, but as the recumbent figures were neither birds nor hares, they did not even bark at them, but gave a friendly wag with their tails, as if to say that it was all right, and returned to their master, to whom they gave no sign to indicate that they had discovered anything.
Silas went about his work in that indescribably lazy way that a boy or man generally assumes when he is laboring under protest. Every stick he lifted from the pile to the wagon seemed to tax his strength to the very utmost, and he was often obliged to stop and rest; but still he made a little headway, and when the rack was about half-loaded he concluded that he could do no more until he had refreshed himself with a smoke.
"I have always heared," said Silas, aloud (whenever he thought himself safely out of hearing, he invariably gave utterance to the thoughts that were in his mind)—"I have always heared 'em say that all this country around here is historical, and that if these mountings could speak, they'd tell tales that would make your eyes stick out as big as your fist.
"They do say that there's been a heap of stealing and plundering going on about here in the days gone by"—as Silas said this he glanced around him a little apprehensively—"and that there's heaps and stacks of gold and silver hid away where nobody won't ever think of looking for 'em. If I thought that was so, wouldn't I try my level best to find some of it? I'd leave Joe and Dan to run the ferry, and then I'd put a shovel on to my shoulder and come up here, and never leave off digging till I'd turned some of these mountings t'other side up. But I guess I won't smoke. I was fool enough to come away and leave my matches to home."