For many long days Blue Blazes revelled in his freedom, sometimes
wandering for miles into the woods, sometimes ranging the beach in
search of better pasturage. Water there was aplenty, but food was
difficult to find. He even browsed bushes and tree-twigs. At first he
expected momentarily to see appear one of his enemies, a man. He heard
imaginary voices in the beat of the waves, the creaking of wind-tossed
tree-tops, the caw of crows, or in the faint whistlings of distant
steamers. He began to look suspiciously behind knolls and stumps. But
for many miles up and down the coast was no port, and the only evidences
he had of man were the sails of passing schooners, or the trailing
smoke-plumes of steam-boats.

Not since he could remember had Blue Blazes been so long without feeling
a whip laid over his back. Still, he was not wholly content. He felt a
strange uneasiness, was conscious of a longing other than a desire for a
good feed of oats. Although he knew it not, Blue Blazes, who hated men
as few horses have ever hated them, was lonesome. He yearned for human
society.

When at last a man did appear on the beach the horse whirled and dashed
into the woods. But he ran only a short distance. Soon he picked his way
back to the lake shore and gazed curiously at the intruder. The man was
making a fire of driftwood. Blue Blazes approached him cautiously. The
man was bending over the fire, fanning it with his hat. In a moment he
looked up.

A half minute, perhaps more, horse and man gazed at each other. Probably
it was a moment of great surprise for them both. Certainly it was for
the man. Suddenly Blue Blazes pricked his ears forward and whinnied. It
was an unmistakable whinny of friendliness if not of glad recognition.
The man on the beach had red hair--hair of the homeliest red you could
imagine. Also he had eyes of the color of ripe gooseberries.

* * * * *

"You see," said Lafe, in explaining the matter afterward, "I was hunting
for burls. I had seen 'em first when I was about sixteen. It was once
when a lot of us went up on the steamer from Saginaw after black bass.
We landed somewhere and went up a river into Mullet Lake. Well, one day
I got after a deer, and he led me off so far I couldn't find my way back
to camp. I walked through the woods for more'n a week before I came out
on the lake shore. It was while I was tramping around that I got into a
hardwood swamp where I saw them burl