could stand outside
and speak through the screen. In winter he had to enter the cabin for
errands like this, and as Jimmy's wood box was as heavily weighted on
his mind as his own, there was nothing unnatural in his stamping snow
on Jimmy's back stoop, and calling "Open!" to Mary at any hour of the
day he happened to be passing the wood pile.

He stood at a distance, and patiently waited until a gray and black
nut-hatch that foraged on the wood covered all the new territory
discovered by the last disturbance of the pile. From loosened bark
Dannie watched the bird take several good-sized white worms and a few
dormant ants. As it flew away he gathered an armload of wood. He was
very careful to clean his feet on the stoop, place the wood without
tearing the neat covering of wall paper, and brush from his coat the
snow and moss so that it fell in the box. He had heard Mary tell the
careless Jimmy to do all these things, and Dannie knew that they saved
her work. There was a whiteness on her face that morning that startled
him, and long after the last particle of moss was cleaned from his
sleeve he bent over the box trying to get something said. The cleaning
took such a length of time that the glint of a smile crept into the
grave eyes of the woman, and the grim line of her lips softened.

"Don't be feeling so badly about it, Dannie," she said. "I could have
told you when you went after him last night that he would go back as
soon as he wakened to-day. I know he is gone. I watched him lave."

Dannie brushed the other sleeve, on which there had been nothing at the
start, and answered: "Noo, dinna ye misjudge him, Mary. He's goin' to a
coon hunt to-nicht. Dinna ye see him take my gun?"

This evidence so bolstered Dannie that he faced Mary with confidence.

"There's a traveling man frae Boston in town, Mary, and he was edifying
the boys a little, and Jimmy dinna like it. He's going to show him a
little country sport to-nicht to edify him."

Dannie outlined the plan of Jimmy's campaign. Despite disapproval, and
a sore heart, Mary Malone had to smile--perhaps as much over Dannie's
eagerness in telling what was contemplated as anything.

"Why don't you take Jimmy's gun and go yoursilf?" she asked. "You
haven't had a day off since fishing was over."

"But I have the work to do," replied Dannie, "and I couldna leave--" He
broke off abruptly, but the woman supplied the word.

"Why can't you lave me, if Jimmy can? I'm not afr