“Part of his brain must have been asleep,” said Akerley. “He thought of you always as a child, I suppose. All this would be well enough if you never grew up; but you are grown up already. And your grandfather cannot live for ever. He is queer, anyway—with this crazy idea in his head about devils.”
“Here he is,” said Catherine.
Gaspard Javet stepped out onto the back porch and stood his rifle against the wall. He sat down and reflectively combed his beard with long fingers crooked with the toil of the woods. Then he looked at Akerley with a new interest, new curiosity and a distinct light of kindliness in his gray eyes.
“I found Ned Tone,” he said. “He tol’ me how he’d had a fight with a b’ar—an’ he looked it. I didn’t gainsay him.”
“Did you tell him anything, Grandad?” asked Catherine.
“Yes, I told ’im how I’d like fine to see the b’ar.”
“Nothin’ about the devil, Grandad?”
“Not me—to be laughed at fer an old fool by them fat-heads down round B’ilin’ Pot.”
“Did you ask him why he told this gentleman to go to the westward to find these clearings?”
“I didn’t tell ’im nothin’ about what doesn’t consarn ’im. If he wants to know what’s happened to this young feller he kin take the old road to the west an’ try to find out.”