He went up the driveway to the house, got an axe from the woodshed and began splitting some pieces of sawed oak and hickory from a great pile in the yard. It was a relief to his pent-up feelings, and he drove the axe home with powerful blows. He was a strong, handsome youth, with face and arms healthily bronzed with work in the open air. He laid a big junk of the oak across the chopping-block, swung the axe, and cleft the stick with a single blow that sent the halves flying in either direction.
"That was a good stroke—a corker," exclaimed a youth who had entered the yard and come up quietly behind him. John Ellison turned quickly.
"Hello, Henry," he said. "Where'd you come from?"
"Just had a swim," replied Henry Burns. "I see where you get all that muscle, now. That's good as canoeing, I guess."
"Well," responded John Ellison, looking rather serious, "I reckon I'll do more of it from now on than canoeing; though I've done my share of work all along. I'm running the farm now—that is, what we've got left. Witham's got a good part of it. I suppose you know, don't you?"
Henry Burns nodded. "It's a shame," he said. "But perhaps it'll come out right in the end."
"I don't see how," said John Ellison. "Witham's got the mill, and the big wood lot where we used to cut most of the wood we sold every fall, and the great meadow up opposite old Granny Thornton's, with the hayfield in it. We've got enough left close by here to keep us from starving, all right; but it isn't what it ought to be. We've had to sell half the cows, because we can't feed them."
Henry Burns whistled. "It's tough," he said, and added, doubtfully, "How about that week up at the pond? Can you go?"
John Ellison looked downcast. "I'd forgotten all about that," he said. "We did plan for a week at Old Whitecap, didn't we? I'm afraid it's all up for me, though. There's haying to be done, a lot of wood to be cut, and chores. I guess you'll have to count me out. I might let Jim go for a couple of days, though," he added, speaking as though he were a dozen years older than his brother, instead of only one.
"No, you're the one that was going," responded Henry Burns; "you could go if the work were done, couldn't you?"