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.
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