“Oh! that’s easily managed,” replied the other, with, another of his queer laughs.  “You haven’t begun to see all the wonders o’ this lodge.  Mr. Coombs amused himself for a whole summer havin’ it built.  He put a heap o’ his own ijees into the same, too.  Yuh see, he used to be a sea captain once on a time, and that gave him the notion to have tables that folded against the wall so as tuh take mighty little room.  Then seem’ as how he might expect to have company some time or other, look how he fixed the bunks along the walls.”

With that Obed turned a button that none of them had thus far noticed, fastened on the wall Immediately a section slipped down exposing a cavity beyond that proved to be a regular sleeping bunk, fully capable of “housing” any ordinary person.  It was plain to be seen that his sea education had given Mr. Coombs the idea carried out in this remarkable fashion.

“Beats anything I ever struck!” admitted the admiring Steve, as he pushed forward to peep inside the cavity that seemed to offer such a comfortable bed.

“But hardly big enough for the whole bunch of us, I’m afraid, Obed,” urged Bandy-legs, with the idea, of course, of drawing the other out.

“This is one bunk,” said Obed, calmly, “there are three jest like it along the two walls, makin’ four in all.  So yuh see it’s jest like Mr. Coombs, he figgered on my having you-all stop over with me some fine day.  Then I c’n make up a bed on that ’ere couch, which is softer ’n any o’ the bunks. He used to sleep, on it all the time, did Mr. Coombs.”

“Well, I must say this is a revelation to me,” admitted Max, his face showing how pleased he felt.  “And you were lucky, as Steve here just said, to fall in with such a fine man as Mr. Coombs, at the time you started your fur farm.  I suppose it was the interest he took in it that made him hand over this cabin, when he learned that his plans for staying here could never be carried out.”

“Why, yes, mostly that,” agreed Obed, turning a little red.  “P’raps I ought to tell yuh that I chanced to do Mr. Coombs a little favor when we first met.  Yuh see, I happened to come on him in the woods.  He’d started out to find a certain kind o’ sapling that he wanted right bad to use; and not bein’ used to findin’ his way around, he jest naturally got lost.  But that wasn’t the wust o’ it.  In using his ax to chop down a sapling he kim across, what did he do but cut his foot, and it was bleeding like fun when I ketched his shouts, and kim up.  Course, I soon fixed that foot, and since he was only a little dried-up speck o’ a man I managed to tote him on my back most ways home here.  He chose to think I’d done him a great favor, and after that he was always sayin’ he meant to repay me some day.  Well, he certainly did when he turns over this here neat contraption at a price that was dirt cheap, and which I’d be ashamed to mention to yuh.  That’s how it come I got this cabin.”