Young Dan was delighted with the letter. He showed it to his parents. Dan’l Evans didn’t think very highly of it as a specimen of epistolary art, though he had no objections to make to the advice and suggestions which it contained.
“Bill’s reckoned a smart man, an’ educated at that, but if this here ain’t the foolishest writ letter ever I read, then I’ll eat it,” he said. “I guess them Forestry people have kinder over-rated him. That’s the Gover’ment for ye, and always has been. Let a man have a slick way with him, an’ slithers of easy talk, an’ the Gover’ment gives him a job of work with nothin’ to do. This here’s a plumb foolish letter, anyhow. Take this here about his indigestion now, an’ this talk about the woodcock! What d’ye reckon he means? I ain’t had much education, but——”
“Ye’re right there, Dan’l Evans,” interrupted Young Dan’s mother, who had held a very high opinion of her brother’s abilities ever since he had become a successful citizen of the great outside world. “Much education! No, indeed. Bill’s clever, an’ always was—an’ I, for one, always knew it. I always knew he should be clever, anyhow, seein’ he was a Tangler; an’ if I ever acted crusty with him it was his own fault for hidin’ his light from me in a bushel-bag, so to speak. He didn’t write that letter to you anyhow, Dan’l Evans, so what you think about it don’t matter a mite to my brother Bill nor anybody.”
This discussion concerning the letter from a purely literary standpoint did not disturb Young Dan in the least, for neither of his parents offered any objection to his acceptance of Uncle Bill Tangler’s offers and advice. He set out first thing in the morning to put the proposition before old Andy Mace, who lived three miles below the Bend, in a log house in a small clearing. It was a morning of sun and frost. The road, recently deep with mud, was hard as iron; the sky was bluer than at midsummer; a flock of geese went over, high up, winging tirelessly southward; and there was a skim of black ice along the lips of the Oxbow. It was a grand morning to be a-wing or a-foot and Young Dan pictured Uncle Bill Tangler seated at his desk in the distant city with a twinge of pity. Though there was no wind, red and yellow leaves of maple and birch snapped their stems loose in some mysterious way and circled down to the frosty moss, and the sounds of their falling came out of the woods on both sides of the road like a soft whisper.
Young Dan found Andy Mace splitting stove-wood beside the back-door of his primitive habitation. Andy had lived a great many years—eighty or perhaps as many as eighty-five—and most of them rough. His joints were not as supple as they had been thirty years ago, but he was still an able man and a first-class hand at all forms of sylvan activity. Experience had taught him the easiest way of doing everything well, and his inherent and acquired wisdom saw to it that he made the most of that knowledge. This fact was demonstrated even in his present employment. The round sticks of dry maple and birch fell apart under the lightest strokes of his axe in a manner that suggested magic to Young Dan.
“You do that slick, Mr. Mace,” said the young man.
“Well, I’d ought to, at my time o’ life,” replied Andy, straightening his back slowly. “I’ve been splittin’ wood nigh onto a hundred years, off and on, so it’s no more’n to be expected that I’d be a purty slick hand at the job by now.”
“I got a letter here from Uncle Bill Tangler, and if you’ll read it I won’t have to tell you what’s in it,” said Young Dan.
“That sounds reasonable,” replied the old man, taking the letter and seating himself on the chopping-block.
He fished a pair of spectacles from a hip-pocket and donned them with great care. He chuckled now and again as he read the letter.