ut I wish you could! Only I ain't such a baby as to have
somebody luggin' me 'round."

Duncan patted his head lovingly. "Hoots, toots, but you surely won't
leave a poor old man like your uncle to find his way alone," he said,
with great tact. "I will not be at Jimmie Archie's sugar bush for many
a year, and you will jist be showing me the road."

Archie's pride was somewhat mollified by this aspect of the case, and
being further soothed by a huge slab of bread and jam, he set off with
his uncle in high glee. Duncan put on his bonnet and plaid and with
Collie bounding in front, half mad with joy at this unexpected
excursion, they stepped out upon the road. The moon was shining, but
its rays were obscured by the mild night mists. A soft, suffused light
shrouded the landscape, giving an unreal and weird appearance to all
objects. A rising wind shifted the ghostly clouds here and there; it
was a strangely uncanny night.

Jimmie Archie McDonald's farm lay up the river, next to Andrew
Johnstone's. But the belt of maples with the sugar camp was quite
near. So when Duncan Polite and the child had gone a short distance up
the road they climbed a fence and crossed the soft, yielding fields
until they reached the line of timber that bordered the stream.

"There's a path jist along by the river that goes straight to Jimmie
Archie's bush," explained Archie importantly, strutting ahead. "Ain't
you glad I called for you, Uncle Duncan?" He dashed into the woods
whooping and yelling, with Collie circling about him in noisy delight,
and darted back again at short intervals to ask a dozen unanswerable
questions. "What made the moon look so queer? And what was the moon
made of, anyhow? Sandy said it was made of green cheese; but Don said
if that was true they must have got a chunk of the moon to make Sandy's
head. And Don ought to know, since he'd been to college. And what
made the moon shine? The master told the Fourth Class that the moon
didn't have any light of its own. And Crummie Bailey said that was a
howlin' lie, 'cause any fool could see it. And the master heard him
saying it at recess, and he licked Crummie good for it, too. And was
the shadow on the moon really a man?"

Duncan replied at random. Ordinarily he was Archie's most interesting
chum, but to-night he was silent and absent. The boy concluded it was
because his uncle had been sick all winter. He was too excited over
the prospect of a visit to t