“And that reminds me: Have you brought any books with you, Yates? I have gone through most of mine already, although many of them will bear going over again; still, I have so much time on my hands that I think I may indulge in a little general reading. When you wrote asking me to meet you in Buffalo, I thought you perhaps intended to tramp through the country, so I did not bring as many books with me as I should have done if I had known you were going to camp out.”
Yates sprang from the hammock.
“Books? Well, I should say so! Perhaps you think I don’t read anything but the daily papers. I’d have you know that I am something of a reader myself. You mustn’t imagine you monopolize all the culture in the township, professor.”
The young man went into the tent, and shortly returned with an armful of yellow-covered, paper-bound small volumes, which he flung in profusion at the feet of the man from Toronto. They were mostly Beadle’s Dime Novels, which had a great sale at the time.
“There,” he said, “you have quantity, quality, and variety, as I have before remarked. ‘The Murderous Sioux of Kalamazoo;’ that’s a good one. A hair-raising Indian story in every sense of the word. The one you are looking at is a pirate story, judging by the burning ship on the cover. But for first-class highwaymen yarns, this other edition is the best. That’s the ‘Sixteen String Jack set.’ They’re immense, if they do cost a quarter each. You must begin at the right volume, or you’ll be sorry. You see, they never really end, although every volume is supposed to be complete in itself. They leave off at the most exciting point, and are continued in the next volume. I call that a pretty good idea, but it’s rather exasperating if you begin at the last book. You’ll enjoy this lot. I’m glad I brought them along.”
“It is a blessing,” said Renmark, with the ghost of a smile about his lips. “I can truthfully say that they are entirely new to me.”
“That’s all right, my boy,” cried Yates loftily, with a wave of his hand. “Use them as if they were your own.”
Renmark arose leisurely and picked up a quantity of the books.
“These will do excellently for lighting our morning camp fire,” he said. “And if you will allow me to treat them as if they were my own, that is the use to which I will put them. You surely do not mean to say that you read such trash as this, Yates?”
“Trash?” exclaimed Yates indignantly. “It serves me right. That’s what a man gets for being decent to you, Renny. Well, you’re not compelled to read them; but if you put one of them in the fire, your stupid treatises will follow, if they are not too solid to burn. You don’t know good literature when you see it.”