handy," said he. And to the girl who
stood panting beside him, "Polly, give Mis' McChesney some salt."

Polly Ann did, and generously,--the salt they had carried with so much
labor threescore and ten miles from the settlements. Then we took our
departure, the girl turning for one last look at Tom's mother, and at the
cabin where he had dwelt. We were all silent the rest of the way,
climbing the slender trail through the forest over the gap into the next
valley. For I was jealous of Tom. I am not ashamed to own it now.

In the smoky haze that rises just before night lets her curtain fall, we
descended the farther slope, and came to Mr. Ripley's cabin.

CHAPTER VII

IN SIGHT OF THE BLUE WALL ONCE MORE

Polly Ann lived alone with her grandfather, her father and mother having
been killed by Indians some years before. There was that bond between
us, had we needed one. Her father had built the cabin, a large one with
a loft and a ladder climbing to it, and a sleeping room and a kitchen.
The cabin stood on a terrace that nature had levelled, looking across a
swift and shallow stream towards the mountains. There was the truck
patch, with its yellow squashes and melons, and cabbages and beans, where
Polly Ann and I worked through the hot mornings; and the corn patch, with
the great stumps of the primeval trees standing in it. All around us the
silent forest threw its encircling arms, spreading up the slopes, higher
and higher, to crown the crests with the little pines and hemlocks and
balsam fir.

There had been no meat save bacon since the McChesneys had left, for of
late game had become scarce, and old Mr. Ripley was too feeble to go on
the long hunts. So one day, when Polly Ann was gone across the ridge, I
took down the long rifle from the buckhorns over the hearth, and the
hunting knife and powder-horn and pouch beside it, and trudged up the
slope to a game trail I discovered. All day I waited, until the forest
light grew gray, when a buck came and stood over the water, raising his
head and stamping from time to time. I took aim in the notch of a
sapling, brought him down, cleaned and skinned and dragged him into the
water, and triumphantly hauled one of his hams down the trail. Polly Ann
gave a cry of joy when she saw me.

"Davy," she exclaimed, "little Davy, I reckoned you was gone away from
us. Gran'pa, here is Davy back, and he has shot a deer."

"You don't say?" replied Mr. Ripley, surveying me and my booty