"Are you going back?" said I.
"Naw, naw. I could never give up this country."
We composed ourselves to sleep, but with his head resting on my feet I was too uncomfortable. "Presently I'll make a fire," said I, "and we'll have hot tea and some bread and butter." And after about twenty minutes I got up, put my boots on, and wandered out to find wood to make a fire. It was about half an hour before dawn. There was a hoar frost, and everything was cold and rimy to the touch. But I made up a bundle of last year's weeds, now sodden straws, and laid them on a half-sheet of my Sunday newspaper. That made a fine blaze, and with twigs and sticks and bits of old plank, I soon had a fine bonfire going. The old German came out and watched me incredulously. He didn't think it was possible to make a fire on such a morning. But he was soon convinced, and went about picking up chunks of wood desultorily, alleging the while that he couldn't have lit such a fire in three hours; evidently I knew how to do it.
"Shall I make tea or coffee?" I asked.
"Cawfee," said the old chap, his mouth watering. The word tea did not represent to him anything good.
"After a cup of hot cawfee I can go a long way. Hot cawfee, mind yer. Varm cawfee 'salright for lunch, but in the morning it must be hot. The only thing better than a cup of cawfee is a pint of whisky.... Say, you've enough fire here now to roast a chicken."
"Wish I had one, we'd roast it."
I emptied the last of my sugar into the pot, and seven or eight spoonfuls of coffee. It was to be "Turkish." The old tramp sat down on the stump of a tree, took out a curly German pipe, and then put a red coal on it. He had matches, but was economical in the matter of lights. "Say," he said to me later, pointing to the ground, "you've dropped a good match." I picked it up.
The coffee was "real good." The old fellow drank it through his thick moustache, and dipping his bread into his cup, munched great mouthfuls. I had offered him butter with his bread, but he refused. "Booter" was nothing to him. He liked apple-"booter."
"Say, you've got on a powerful pair of boots!"