“I wish I did.  Can’t I get some eggs to take home?”

“No; Da said if I wouldn’t take any more he’d lend me his Injun Chief gun to shoot Rabbits with.”

“What?  Are there Rabbits here?”

“Wall, I should say so.  I got three last winter.”

“But I mean now,” said Yan, with evident disappointment.

“They ain’t so easy to get at now, but we can try.  Some day when all the work’s done I’ll ask Da for his gun.”

“When all the work’s done,” was a favourite expression of the Raftens for indefinitely shelving a project, it sounded so reasonable and was really so final.

Sam opened up the lower door of the sideboard and got out some flint arrow-heads picked up in the ploughing, the teeth of a Beaver dating from the early days of the settlement, and an Owl very badly stuffed.  The sight of these precious things set Yan all ablaze.  “Oh!” was all he could say.  Sam was gratified to see such effect produced by the family possessions and explained, “Da shot that off’n the barn an’ the hired man stuffed it.”

The boys were getting on well together now.  They exchanged confidences all day as they met in doing chores.  In spite of the long interruptions, they got on so well that Sam said after supper, “Say, Yan, I’m going to show you something, but you must promise never to tell—­Swelpye!” Of course Yan promised and added the absolutely binding and ununderstandable word—­“Swelpme.”

“Le’s both go to the barn,” said Sam.

When they were half way he said:  “Now I’ll let on I went back for something.  You go on an’ round an’ I’ll meet you under the ‘rusty-coat’ in the orchard.”  When they met under the big russet apple tree, Sam closed one of his melancholy eyes and said in a voice of unnecessary hush, “Follow me.”  He led to the other end of the orchard where stood the old log house that had been the home before the building of the brick one.  It was now used as a tool house.  Sam led up a ladder to the loft (this was all wholly delightful).  There at the far end, and next the little gable pane, he again cautioned secrecy, then when on invitation Yan had once more “swelped” himself, he rummaged in a dirty old box and drew out a bow, some arrows, a rusty steel trap, an old butcher knife, some fish-hooks, a flint and steel, a box full of matches, and some dirty, greasy-looking stuff that he said-was dried meat.  “You see,” he explained, “I always wanted to be a hunter, and Da was bound I’d be a dentist.  Da said there was no money in hunting, but one day he had to go to the dentist an’ it cost four dollars, an’ the man wasn’t half a day at the job, so he wanted me to be a dentist, but I wanted to be a hunter, an’ one day he licked me and Bud (Bud, that’s my brother that died a year ago.  If you hear Ma talk you’ll think he was an angel, but I always reckoned he was a crazy galoot, an’ he was the worst boy in school by odds).  Wall, Da licked us awful for not feeding the hogs, so Bud