"Oh!" said Natalie. "Only another little log shack! Why I imagined a—a——"
"Five-story stone front?" suggested Garth.
"Well, I don't know," she said, "but not that!"
On the hither side was a solitary cabin; and in the doorway stood a breed, outwardly of a different pattern from any they had seen—but after all not so different. He was clad in decent Sunday blacks minus the coat; and wore heavy-rimmed spectacles which he took off when he really wished to see. On the table within was ostentatiously spread an open Bible—the sharp-eyed Natalie took note that it was upside down. This young man had a heavy expression of conscious responsibility, before which the insouciant Pake visibly quailed. Pake indicated to Garth that Ancose Mackey stood before him.
"Where is the Bishop?" Garth demanded impatiently.
Ancose blandly ignored the question for the present. "How-do-you-do, sir," he said, like a mechanical doll, at the same time politely extending his hand.
Garth, shaking it hastily, repeated his question—but the young man was not to be hurried over any of his self-pleasing formalities.
"How-do-you-do, sir," he repeated to Natalie in precisely the same tone, gravely shaking hands with her.
Then they must needs come in and sit down, while their host made a remark on the weather, and informed them, with an air, that he was a very good reader. He wrapped his Bible in an end of comforter, and pulling a doll's trunk from under the bed, put it away. Natalie had a glimpse of the contents of the trunk; she said afterward, it was like the inside of his head; beside the Bible, there were sundry pieces of dried moose meat, a gaudy silk handkerchief, tobacco and a brass watch-chain of the size of a small cable. He took out the latter and put it on.
Finally he appeared to hear Garth's question. "Bishop gone up little river. Four days," he said.