When he touched the shore and the great animal stood shaking his wet hide, Adrian’s astonishment found vent in a whirlwind of questions that Pierre answered at his leisure and after his kind. But he walked first toward Margot and offered her a great bunch of trailing arbutus flowers, saying:
“I saw these just as I pushed off and went back after them. What’s the matter here, that the flag is up? It was the biggest storm I ever saw. Yes; a deal of beasties are killed back on the mainland. Any dead over here?”
“No, I’m glad to say, none that we know of. But Snowfoot’s shed is down and uncle is going to build a new one. I hope you’ve come to work.”
Pierre laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh! yes.”
But his interest in work was far less than in the stranger whom he now answered, and whose presence on Peace Island was a mystery to him. Heretofore, the only visitors there had been laborers or traders, but this young fellow, so near his own age, and despite his worn clothing, was of another sort. He recognized this, at once, as Margot had done, and his curiosity made him ask:
“Where’d you come from? Hurricane blow you out the sky?”
“About the same. I was lost in the woods and Margot found me and saved my life. What’ll you take for that moose?”
“There isn’t money enough in the State of Maine to buy him!”
“Nonsense! Well, if there was I haven’t it. But you could get a good price for it anywhere.”