e blamed trees always beat me ... don't bother you
much, seemingly though," he added, as he watched Colin's pencil with the
curiosity of a child.

"I've a little girl at home who does pretty well," he continued after a
moment, "but you've certainly got her skinned. I wish she could see you
doing it."

His delight in a form of skill which has always been as magical to me as
it seemed to him, was charmingly boyish, and Colin turned over his
sketch-book, and showed him the notes he had made as we went along. One
of a stump fence particularly delighted him--those stump fences made out
of the roots of pine trees set side by side, which had been a feature of
the country some miles back, and which make such a weird impression on
the landscape, like rows of gigantic black antlers, or many-armed Hindoo
idols, or a horde of Zulus in fantastic war-gear drawn up in
battle-array, or the blackened stumps of giants' teeth--Colin and I tried
all those images and many more to express the curious weird effect of
coming upon them in the midst of a green and smiling landscape.

"Well, lads," he said, after we had talked awhile, "I shall have to be
going. But you've given me a great deal of pleasure. Can't I give you a
lift in exchange? I guess there is room for the three of us."

Now Colin and I, on the occasion of our ride with the apple-farmer,
awhile back, had held subtle casuistical debate on the legitimacy of men
ostensibly, not to say ostentatiously, on foot to New York picking up
chance rides in this way. The argument had gone into pursuit of very fine
distinctions, and almost rivalled in its casuistry the famous old Duns
Scotus--or was it Thomas Aquinas?--debate as to how many angels can dance
on the point of a needle. Once we had come to a deadlock as to the kind
of vehicle from which it was proper to accept such hospitality. Perhaps
it was a Puritan scrupulousness in my blood that had made me take the
stand that four-wheeled vehicles, such as wagons, hay-carts and the like,
being slow-moving, were permissible, but that buggies, or any form of
rapid two-wheeled vehicle, were not. To this Colin had retorted that, on
that basis, a tally-ho would be all right, or even an automobile. So the
argument had wrestled from side to side, and finally we had compromised.

We agreed that an occasional buggy would be within the vagabond law and
that any vehicle, other, of course, than an automobile, which was not
plying for hire--such as a t