When we passed the orchard and came to the dreary house I thought, "There's no chance of this young lad ever coming to live here."
The building was like some old drunkard trying to stagger down hill. Its roof was gone, its window eyes were broken, its doors were flapping and the well beside it had half the curbstone broken down.
Mr. Devering looked into it. I suppose he thought Lammie-noo might have tumbled in, then he swung back the partly open front door, which at his touch groaned and fell down flat.
Dallas started back, then went bravely forward, only to fall back again and lay a trembling hand on my neck. "Oh! what is that dead thing?" he asked.
I looked over his shoulder and saw a porcupine shedding his quills for the last time. The corner of the open door had been gnawed by him or some other creature. I knew what that meant. Many wild animals will dig and tear at anything the salty hand of man has passed over, and in the back part of the room I noticed an old table worried up and down its seams by the teeth probably of this little creature who had found food crumbs in the cracks.
Mr. Devering passed through the mournful little house. The bedrooms were deserted, the kitchen stove was lopping over, and the pots and pans were strewn about the floor. Chairs were broken and blinds tumbling from the windows.
"Mischievous boys or campers have been here," said Mr. Devering, "the Talkers left the house in good shape. Before I'm a month older, I'll have it cleared up. It gives me the blues to see a former neat place in this condition—— Come outside, my lad."
"Ah! there is a view," he said a few minutes later when we stood under the blue sky and surveyed the ranges and ranges of green hills surrounding us on every side with here and there a glimpse of a distant lake. "The everlasting hills—the everlasting hills."
Young Dallas stood with the fresh wind blowing some color in his pale cheeks. He was smiling now as he asked, "What is that highest peak of all, Captain?"
"Old Mount Terror."