“I heartily wish you could go to her this minute. She’s superstitious enough, in all conscience, yet she has the happy faculty of keeping her lugubrious son in subjection.”
Whenever Pierre became particularly depressing, the other would rattle off as many of the longest words as occurred to him. They had the effect of diverting his comrade’s thoughts.
Then they pulled on again, nor did anything disastrous happen to further hinder their progress. The food did not give out, for they lived mostly upon berries, having neither time nor desire to stop and cook their remnant of beans. When they were especially tired, Pierre lighted a fire and made a bucket of hemlock tea, but Adrian found cold water preferable to this decoction; and, in fact, they were much nearer Donovan’s, that first settlement in the wilderness, than even Pierre had suspected.
Their last portage was made—an easy one, there being nothing but themselves and the canoe to carry—and they came to a big dead water where they had looked to find another running stream; but had no sooner sighted it than their ears were greeted by the laughter of loons, which threw up their legs and dived beneath the surface in that absurd manner which Adrian always found amusing.
“Bad luck again!” cried Pierre, instantly; “never heard a loon but—”
“But you see a house. Look! look! Donovan’s, or somebody’s, no matter whose. A house, a house!”
There, indeed, it lay, a goodly farmstead, with its substantial cabins, its out-buildings, its groups of cattle on the cleared land, and—yes, yes—its moving human beings, and what seemed oddest still, its teams of horses.
Even Pierre was silent, and tears sprang to the eyes of both lads as they gazed. Until that moment neither had fully realized how lonely and desolate had been their situation.
“Now for it! It’s a biggish lake, and we’re pretty tired. But that means rest, plenty to eat—everything.”
Their rudely built canoe was almost useless when they beached it at last on Donovan’s wharf, and their own strength was spent. But it was a hospitable household to which they had come, and one quite used to welcoming wanderers from the forest. They were fed and clothed and bedded, without question; but, when a long sleep had set them both right, tongues wagged and plans were settled with amazing promptness.