keep on myself until
after the first o' the year, same's usual. I've got my reasons," he
added. "But don't you go out no more, Chauncey."

"What you goin' to do about them trees o' Packer's?" asked Chauncey
suddenly, and not without effort. The question had been on his mind
all the afternoon. "Old Ferris has laid a bet that he'll git 'em
anyway. I signed the paper they've got down to Fox'l Berry's store to
the Cove. A number has signed it, but I shouldn't want to be the one
to carry it up to Packer. They all want your name, but they've got
some feelin' about how you're situated. Some o' the boys made me
promise to speak to you, bein' 's we're keepin' together."

"You can tell 'em I'll sign it," said Joe Banks, flushing a warm,
bright color under his sea-chilled skin. "I don't know what set him
out to be so poor-behaved. He's a quick-tempered man, Packer is, but
quick over. I never knew him to keep no such a black temper as this."

"They always say that you can't drive a Packer," said Chauncey,
tugging against the uneven waves. "His mother came o' that old
fightin' stock up to Bolton; 't was a different streak from his
father's folks--they was different-hearted an' all pleasant. Ferris
has done the whole mean business. John Packer'd be madder 'n he is now
if he knowed how Ferris is makin' a tool of him. He got a little too
much aboard long ago's Thanksgivin' Day, and bragged to me an' another
fellow when he was balmy how he'd rile up Packer into sellin' them
pines, and then he'd double his money on 'em up to Boston; he said
there wa'n't no such a timber pine as that big one left in the State
that he knows on. Why, 'tis 'most five foot through high's I can
reach."

Chauncey stopped rowing a minute, and held the oars with one hand
while he looked over his shoulder. "I should miss them old trees," he
said; "they always make me think of a married couple. They ain't no
common growth, be they, Joe? Everybody knows 'em. I bet you if
anything happened to one on 'em t' other would go an' die. They say
ellums has mates, an' all them big trees."

Joe Banks had been looking at the pines all the way in; he had steered
by them from point to point. Now he saw them just over Fish Rock,
where the surf was whitening, and over the group of fish-houses, and
began to steer straight inshore. The sea was less rough now, and after
getting well into the shelter of the land he drew in his oar. Chauncey
could pull the rest of the way without