“Tom Connor!” we both exclaimed. “Do you know Tom Connor, then?”
“Yes, we have met two or three times in the mountains, and he once spent the night with me in my cabin—he is the ‘one exception’ I told you about, you remember. He seems like a good, honest fellow, and he has certainly been most obliging to me.”
As we looked inquiringly at him, wondering how Tom could have found an opportunity to be of service to one living such a secluded life as the hermit did, our friend went on:
“I happened to mention to him that I had great need of an iron pot, and three days afterwards, on returning home one evening, what should I find standing outside my door but a big iron pot, and in it a chip, upon which was written in pencil, ‘Compliments of T. Connor.’”
“Just like Tom,” said I, laughing. “He has more friends than any other man in the district, and he deserves it, for when he makes a friend he can’t rest easy until he has found some way of doing him a service.”
“And he’s as honest as they make ’em,” Joe continued. “If he’s a friend, he’s a friend, and if he’s an enemy, he’s an enemy—he doesn’t leave you in doubt.”
“Just what I should think,” said the hermit. “Very different from Long John, if I’m not mistaken. That gentleman, I suspect, is of the kind that would shake hands with you in the morning and then come in the night and burn your house down. What were you and he doing, by the way? I’ve been watching you for an hour. First one and then the other would kneel down in the snow and chop a hole in the bed of the creek, then get up, walk a mile, and do it again. If I may be allowed to say so,” he went on, laughing, “it appeared to an outsider like a crazy sort of amusement.”
“I should think it might,” said I, laughing too; and I then proceeded to tell our friend the object of these seemingly senseless actions.
“And do you expect to go prospecting for this vein of galena in the spring?” he inquired, when I had concluded.