“If that will do you any good, you are welcome,” she said. “It’s all the Christmas I can afford to give you.”
Then she shut the window.
Harvey and Tom Edwards, amused and disappointed, passed out of the gateway and went on.
“Well, we’re a quarter better off,” laughed Harvey, untying his oil-skins and stowing the coin away in a trousers’ pocket.
“Oh, hang the quarter!” exclaimed Tom Edwards, sleepily. “I’d give ten dollars for a good night’s lodging, a bath and a shave—that is, if I had the ten,” he added. “What shall we do, Jack?”
“I know,” replied Harvey, promptly. “I’ve seen a big old farmhouse, with a lot of barns and hen-houses and cattle sheds and things, when we’ve been lying off shore, and it looked mighty comfortable and home-like. It’s down the shore a piece. Let’s go there. We won’t ask for lodgings, though. We’ll get into one of the barns, and make ourselves comfortable. They can’t find us until morning, anyway.”
“Go ahead. I’m with you,” said Tom Edwards.
Harvey led the way, across the open country, through a series of little hills and hollows, to the eastward of where they had landed. Tom Edwards, wearied and burdened with the weight of the cumbersome oil-skins, followed doggedly, nearly falling asleep as he walked.
They came presently to the outskirts of a farm of some considerable size, fenced in, and skirted with small trees and bushes. From the shelter of these, they could look across some ploughed land, with the old stubble of corn-stalks showing, to the farmhouse and out-buildings. There were, as Harvey had noted, several of these.
“I wonder if there are any dogs,” muttered Harvey, as he surveyed the prospect. “If there are, we’re done for—unless we have better luck than we did before.”