On the Saturday morning which was the last they were to have together, the three comrades had strayed from the vague wood road along one of the unexpected levels on the mountain slopes, and had come to a standstill in a place which the boy pretended not to know his way out of. Westover doubted him, for he had found that Jeff liked to give himself credit for woodcraft by discovering an escape from the depths of trackless wildernesses.
"I guess you know where we are," he suggested.
"No, honestly," said the boy; but he grinned, and Westover still doubted him.
"Hark! What's that?" he said, hushing further speech from him with a motion of his hand. It was the sound of an axe.
"Oh, I know where we are," said Jeff. "It's that Canuck chopping in
Whitwell's clearing. Come along."
He led the way briskly down the mountain-side now, stopping from time to time and verifying his course by the sound of the axe. This came and went, and by-and-by it ceased altogether, and Jeff crept forward with a real or feigned uncertainty. Suddenly he stopped. A voice called, "Heigh, there!" and the boy turned and fled, crashing through the underbrush at a tangent, with his dog at his heels.
Westover looked after them, and then came forward. A lank figure of a man at the foot of a poplar, which he had begun to fell, stood waiting him, one hand on his axe-helve and the other on his hip. There was the scent of freshly smitten bark and sap-wood in the air; the ground was paved with broad, clean chips.
"Good-morning," said Westover.
"How are you?" returned the other, without moving or making any sign of welcome for a moment. But then he lifted his axe and struck it into the carf on the tree, and came to meet Westover.
As he advanced he held out his hand. "Oh, you're the one that stopped that fellow that day when he was tryin' to scare my children. Well, I thought I should run across you some time." He shook hands with Westover, in token of the gratitude which did not express itself in words. "How are you? Treat you pretty well up at the Durgins'? I guess so. The old woman knows how to cook, anyway. Jackson's about the best o' the lot above ground, though I don't know as I know very much against the old man, either. But that boy! I declare I 'most feel like takin' the top of his head off when he gets at his tricks. Set down."