I war ter stay nigh
ye an' mind yer bid."

"That's my bid!" said the old man sternly. "Fotch the beastis."

There was no one else about the place. Jonas Creyshaw had gone fishing
shortly after daybreak. His wife had trudged off to her sister's house
down in the cove, and had taken the baby with her. Tad was ploughing in
the cornfield on the other side of the ravine. Si had no advice, and he
had been brought up to think that Old Daddy's word was law.

When the old man, mounted at last, was jogging up the road, Tad chanced
to come to the house for a bit of rope to mend the plough-gear. He saw,
far up the leafy vista, the departing cavalier. He cast a look of amazed
reproach upon Si. Then, speechless with astonishment, he silently
pointed at the distant figure.

Si was a logician.

"I never lef' _him_," he said. "He lef' _me_."

"Ye oughter rej'ice in yer whole bones while ye hev got 'em," Tad
returned, with withering sarcasm. "When dad kems home, some of 'em 'll
git bruk, sure. Warn't ye tole not ter leave him fur _nuthin'_, ye
triflin' shoat!"

"He lef' _me_!" Si stoutly maintained.

Meantime, Old Daddy journeyed on.

Except for the wonderful mountain air, the settlement, three miles
distant, had nothing about it to indicate its elevation. It was far from
the cliffs, and there was no view. It was simply a little hollow of a
clearing scooped out among the immense forests. When the mountaineers
clear land, they do it effectually. Not a tree was left to embellish the
yards of any of the four or five little log huts that constituted the
hamlet, and the glare was intense.

As six or eight loungers sat smoking about the door of the store, there
was nothing to intercept their astonished view of Old Daddy when he
suddenly appeared out of the gloomy forest, blinking in the sun and bent
half double with fatigue.

Even the rudest and coarsest of these mountaineers accord a praiseworthy
deference to the aged among them. Old Daddy was held in reverential
estimation at home, and was well accustomed to the respect shown him
now, when, for the first time in many years, he had chosen to jog
abroad. They helped him to dismount, and carried him bodily into the
store. After he had tilted his chair back against the rude counter, he
looked around with an important face upon the attentive group.

"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son air the strongest man
ever seen, sence Samson!"

"I hev always hearn that sayin', O