stranger and to
distrust him, for they cackled and, spreading their wings, fled cackling
up the stream. As he neared the house, the little girl ran around the
stone chimney, stopped short, shaded her eyes with one hand for a moment
and ran excitedly into the house. A moment later, the bearded giant
slouched out, stooping his head as he came through the door.

"Hitch that 'ar post to yo' hoss and come right in," he thundered
cheerily. "I'm waitin' fer ye."

The little girl came to the door, pushed one brown slender hand through
her tangled hair, caught one bare foot behind a deer-like ankle and
stood motionless. Behind her was the boy--his dagger still in hand.

"Come right in!" said the old man, "we are purty pore folks, but you're
welcome to what we have."

The fisherman, too, had to stoop as he came in, for he, too, was tall.
The interior was dark, in spite of the wood fire in the big stone
fireplace. Strings of herbs and red-pepper pods and twisted tobacco hung
from the ceiling and down the wall on either side of the fire; and in
one corner, near the two beds in the room, hand-made quilts of many
colours were piled several feet high. On wooden pegs above the door
where ten years before would have been buck antlers and an old-fashioned
rifle, lay a Winchester; on either side of the door were auger holes
through the logs (he did not understand that they were port-holes) and
another Winchester stood in the corner. From the mantel the butt of a
big 44-Colt's revolver protruded ominously. On one of the beds in the
corner he could see the outlines of a figure lying under a brilliantly
figured quilt, and at the foot of it the boy with the pine dagger had
retreated for refuge. From the moment he stooped at the door something
in the room had made him vaguely uneasy, and when his eyes in swift
survey came back to the fire, they passed the blaze swiftly and met on
the edge of the light another pair of eyes burning on him.

"Howdye!" said Hale.

"Howdye!" was the low, unpropitiating answer.

The owner of the eyes was nothing but a boy, in spite of his length: so
much of a boy that a slight crack in his voice showed that it was just
past the throes of "changing," but those black eyes burned on without
swerving--except once when they flashed at the little girl who, with her
chin in her hand and one foot on the top rung of her chair, was gazing
at the stranger with equal steadiness. She saw the boy's glance, she
shifted her