“My place is here with your uncle,” he replied. “I was born and brought up in these parts. I’m at home in the woods, an’ I couldn’t bear to walk raound on bricks an’ stones. No, here I be, an’ here I must stay.”
“But wouldn’t you like to spend a month in the city? You said the other day you had never been there.”
The old trapper seemed at a loss for words, but presently answered: “I can’t jest tell ye haow I feel abaout it, Bess, but somehaow I sh’d feel shet in, and kept away from the blue sky. What with lookin’ aout fer teams an’ horses an’ folks, an’ seem’ all sorts o’ strange sights, an’ p’raps thinkin’ o’ makin’ money—why, I’m afeerd I shouldn’t feel so much of a man. In the woods it’s all so still that I can almost hear the trees a-growin’. Then a bird flies through the baoughs overhead, an’ I look up an’ see all the firs with their leetle crosses, and the pines pointin’ up, an’ so I keep lookin’ higher, an’ thar’s the blue, an’ the clouds, an’ I remember who’s up thar, an’ who made woods an’ birds an’ all!”
The little company of daintily dressed boys and girls felt awed into silence as they listened to this outburst from the rough preacher, sitting on a milking-stool, and never forgetting his work, as he talked. It was a sermon they would remember long after the old barn and The Pines and Ruel himself were hundreds of miles away.
“What hev ye planned fer to-day?” said Ruel in his ordinary, quiet tones, breaking the silence that had followed his earnest words.
“O, there’s a lot of packing. The ‘silver rags’ are to be tied up, to take home. And we’re going to every spot on the farm where we’ve had good times this lovely summer!”
“I was thinkin’ that p’raps you might like to wind up with a little fishin’ trip this afternoon.”
“O good! Where shall we go?”
“Right daown by where we were cuttin’ wood last winter—remember?—thar’s a little brook that always has plenty of trout in it.”
“That’s first-rate!” exclaimed Randolph. “The girls can take a lunch—just a small one, without much fuss—and Tom and I will furnish a string of trout.”