Also, he spent a lot of time down on the crick flat looking for a mu, which is the same as a sneeze-duck, except for the parallel stripes.  It has but one foot webbed; so it swims in a circle and can be easy shot by the sportsman, who first baits it with snuff that it will go miles to get.  Another wild beast they had him hunting was the filo, which is like the ruffle snake, except that it has a thing like a table leg in its ear.  It gets up on a hill and peeks over at you, but will never come in to lunch.  The boys said they nearly had one over on Grizzly Peak one time, but it swallowed its tail and become invisible to the human eye, though they could still hear its low note of pleading.  Also, they had Herman looking for a mated couple of the spinach bug for which the Smithsonian Institution had offered a reward of five hundred dollars, cash.

Herman fell for it all—­all this old stuff that I had kicked the slats out of my trundle-bed laughing at.  And in between exciting adventures with his fowling piece he’d write himself some pieces of poetry in a notebook, all about the cows and the clouds and other natural objects.  He would also recite poetry written by other Germans, if let.  And at night he’d play on a native instrument shaped like a potato, by blowing into one cavity and stopping up other cavities to make the notes.  It would be slow music and make you think of the quiet old churchyard where your troubles would be o’er; and why not get there as soon as possible?  Sad music!

So Herman was looked on as a harmless imbecile by one and all till Eloise Plummer come over to help in the kitchen while the haying crew was here last summer.  And Eloise looked on him as something else.  She looked on Herman as one of them that make it unsafe for girls to leave home.  She had good reason to.

Eloise is in the prime of young womanhood; but this is just exactly as fur as any fair-minded judge would go to say of her as a spectacle.  Her warmest adherents couldn’t hardly get any warmer than that if put under oath.  She has a heart of gold undoubtedly, but a large and powerful face that would belong rightly to the head director of a steel corporation that’s worked his way up from the bottom.

It is not a face that has ever got Eloise pestered with odious attentions from the men.  Instead of making ’em smirk and act rough, but playful, it made ’em think that life, after all, is more serious than most of us suspect in our idle moments.  It certainly is a face to make men think.  And inspiring this black mood in men had kind of reacted on Eloise till they couldn’t quite see what they was ever intended for.  It was natural.

I don’t say the girl could of cooked all winter in a lumber camp and not been insulted a time or two; but it wasn’t fur from that with her.

So you can imagine how bitter she was when this Herman nut tried to make up to her.  Herman was a whirlwind wooer; I’ll say that for him.  He told her right off that she was beautiful as the morning star and tried to kiss her hand.  None of these foolish preliminaries for Herman, like “Lovely weather we’re having!” or “What’s your favourite flower?”