“Why—why, shoot with our bows and arrow up there, tying a piece of string to it. It is not a very high steeple.”
“Yes,” said Cyrus, “and he’ll pull it up, and then a stouter one.”
“Oh, yes! Good! Well, boys, get your bows, and I will get the stuff,” said the boat–builder.
How carefully those young archers shot steepleward their arrows, first attaching to the latter a long, stout thread!
Oh, hands of the archers, tremble not! Oh, winds above, blow not! And—and—over, yes, just across the vane went the thread fastened to Walter Plympton’s arrow! A cord was now tied to the thread, the man carefully pulling it up, and then there went to him a new clothes–line, and down he came.
“Much obleeged to you!” he said.
“And we are obleeged to you!” replied the sexton. “And here’s your money for the job.”
As the stranger turned to go away, he laid his hand on Walter’s shoulder, and said, “I saw it was your arrer that did the work. I won’t forgit it.”
Away he walked, disappearing down the road that wound its dusty line through the green forest.
All the time he had been with his new acquaintances, he had not given his name. Indeed, nobody asked for it. Walter remembered him only as a man with a bushy beard.