“How's that, Archie B.?”
Archie B. lowered his voice to a gentle persuasive whisper: “Don't do it, ole man—come now—be reasonable. If we stay here in the woods, Triggers'll think we're at home. Dad will think we're in school. They'll never know no better. It's wrong, but we'll have plenty o' time to make it right—we've got six months mo' of school this year. Now, if you do go—you'll be licked twice an'—an', Ozzie B., I'll git licked when paw hears of it to-night.”
“Oh,” said Ozzie B., “that's it, is it?”
“Yes, of course; if a man don't look out for his own hide, whose goin' to do it for him? Come now, ole man.”
Ozzie B. was silent. His brother saw the narrow forehead wrinkling in indecision. He knew the different habits—not principles—of his nature were at work for mastery. Finally the hypocrite habit prevailed, when he said piously: “We have sowed the wind, Archie B.—we'll hafter reap the whirlwind, like paw says.”
“Go!” shouted his brother. “Go!” and he helped him along with a kick—“Go, since I can't save you. You'll reap the whirlwind, but I won't if my brains can save me.”
He sat down on a log and watched his brother go down the path, sobbing as usual, when he felt that he was a martyr. He sat long and thought.
“It's bad,” he sighed—“a man cu'd do so much mo' in life if he didn't hafter waste so much time arguin' with fools. Well, I'm here fur the day an' I'll learn somethin'. Now, I wanter know if one squirrel er two squirrels stays in the same hole in winter. Then there's the wild-duck. I wanter kno' when the mallards go south.”
In a few minutes he had hid himself behind a tree in a clump of brush. He was silent for ten minutes, so silent that only the falling leaves could be heard. Then very cautiously he imitated the call of the gray squirrel—once, twice, and still again. He had not long to wait. In a hole high up in a hickory a little gray head popped out—then a squirrel came out cautiously—first its head, then half of its body, and each time it moved looking and listening, with its cunning, bright eyes, taking in everything. Then it frisked out with a flirt of its tail, and sat on a limb nearby. It was followed by another and another. Archie B. watched them for a half hour, a satisfied smile playing around his lips. He was studying squirrel. He saw them run into the hole again and bring out each a nut and sit on a nearby limb and eat it.
“That settles that,” he said to himself. “I thought they kept their nuts in the same hole.”