They had paused on a thickly wooded hillside.
“We've come eight or ten miles if we have come a rod, Price,” said Mahaffy, “and I am in favor of lying by for the day. When it comes dark we can go on again.”
The judge readily acquiesced in this, and they presently found a dense thicket which they cautiously entered. Reaching the center of the tangled growth, they beat down the briers and bushes, or cut them away with their knives, until they had a little cleared space where they could build a fire. Then from the pack which Mahaffy carried, the rudiments of a simple but filling meal were produced.
“Your parents took no chances when they named you Solomon!” said the judge approvingly.
CHAPTER XIV. BELLE PLAIN
“Now, Tom,” said Betty, with a bustling little air of excitement as she rose from the breakfast table that first morning at Belle Plain, “I am ready if you are. I want you to show me everything!”
“I reckon you'll notice some changes,” remarked Tom.
He went from the room and down the hall a step or two in advance of her. On the wide porch Betty paused, breathing deep. The house stood on an eminence; directly before it at the bottom of the slight descent was a small bayou, beyond this the forest stretched away in one unbroken mass to the Mississippi. Here and there, gleaming in the brilliant morning light, some great bend of the river was visible through the trees, while the Arkansas coast, blue and distant, piled up against the far horizon.
“What is it you want to see, anyhow, Betty?” Tom demanded, turning on her.