“It was a dreamy, sun-drenched September afternoon. The wide, shallow river was rippling with a mellow noise over its golden pebbles. Back from the river, upon both banks, the yellow grain-fields and blue-green patches of turnips slanted gently to the foot of the wooded hills. A little distance down stream stood two horses, fetlock-deep in the water, drinking.
“Near the top of the bank, where the gravel had thinned off into yellow sand, and the sand was beginning to bristle with the scrubby bushes of the sand-plum, lay the trunk of an ancient oak-tree. In the effort to split this gnarled and seasoned timber, Jake Simmons and I were expending the utmost of our energies. Our axes had proved unequal to the enterprise, so we had been at last compelled to call in the aid of a heavy mall and hardwood wedges.
“With the axes we had accomplished a slight split in one end of the prostrate giant. An axe-blade held this open while we inserted a hardwood wedge, which we drove home with repeated blows of the mall till the crack was widened, whereupon, of course, the axe dropped out.
“The mall—a huge, long-handled mallet, so heavy as to require both hands to wield it—was made of the sawed-off end of a small oak log, and was bound around with two hoops of wrought iron to keep it from splitting. This implement was wielded by Jake, with a skill born of years in the backwoods.
“Suddenly, as Jake was delivering a tremendous blow on the head of the wedge, the mall flew off its handle, and pounded down the bank, making the sand and gravel fly in a way that bore eloquent witness to Jake’s vigor. The sinewy old woodsman toppled over, and, losing his balance, sat down in a thicket of sand-plums.
“Of course I laughed, and so did Jake; but our temperate mirth quieted down, and Jake, picking himself up out of the sand-plums, went to re-capture the errant mall. As he set it down on the timber, and proceeded to refit the handle to it, he was all at once quite overcome with merriment. He laughed and laughed, not loudly, but with convulsive inward spasms, till I began to feel indignant at him. When mirth is not contagious, it is always exasperating. Presently he sat down on the log and gasped, holding his sides.
“‘Don’t be such an old fool, Jake,’ said I rudely; at which he began to laugh again, with the intolerable relish of one who holds the monopoly of a joke.
“‘I don’t see anything so excruciatingly funny,’ I grumbled, ‘in the head flying off of an old mall, and a long-legged old idiot sitting down hard in the sand-plum patch. That mall might just as well as not have hit me on the head, and maybe you’d have called that the best joke of the season.’
“‘Bless your sober soul!’ answered Jake, ‘it ain’t that I’m laughing at.’
“I was not going to give him the satisfaction of asking him for his story, so I proceeded to fix a new wedge, and hammer it in with my axe. Jake was too full of his reminiscence to be chilled by my apparent lack of interest. Presently he drew out a short pipe, filled it with tobacco, and remarked—