These talks with me made George restless.  He was never happy unless Jonathan had him on his mind.

But it was a cluster of daisies that first lifted the inner lid of Jonathan’s heart for me.  I was away up the side of the Notch overlooking the valley, my easel and canvas lashed to a tree, the wind blew so, when Jonathan came toiling up the slope, a precipice in fact, with a tin can strapped to his back, filled with hot corn and some doughnuts, and threw himself beside me, the sweat running down his weather-tanned neck.

“So long ez we know whar you’re settin’ at work it ain’t nat’ral to let ye starve, be it?” throwing himself beside me.  George had started ahead of him and had been picked up and carried as usual.

When Jonathan sat upright, after a breathing spell, his eye fell on a tuft of limp, bruised daisies, flattened to the earth by the heel of his clumsy shoe.  There were acres of others in sight.

“Gosh hang!” he said, catching his breath suddenly, as if something had stung him, and reaching down with his horny, bent fingers, “ef thet ain’t too bad.”  Then to himself in a tone barely audible,—­he had entirely forgotten my presence,—­“You never had no sense, Jonathan, nohow, stumblin’ raound like er bull calf tramplin’ everything.  Jes’ see what ye’ve gone an’ done with them big feet er yourn,” bending over the bruised plant and tenderly adjusting the leaves.  “Them daisies hez got jest ez good a right ter live ez you hev.”

* * * * *

I was almost sure when I began that I had a story to tell.  I had thought of that one about Luke Pollard,—­the day Luke broke his leg behind Loon Mountain, and Jonathan carried him down the gorge on his back, crossing ledges that would have scared a goat.  It was snowing at the time, they said, and blowing a gale.  When they got half way down White Face, Jonathan’s foot slipped and he fell into the ravine, breaking his wrist.  Only the drifts saved his life.  Luke caught a sapling and held on.  The doctor set Jonathan’s wrist last, and Luke never knew it had been broken until the next day.  It is one of the stories they tell you around the stove winter evenings.

“Julluk the night Jonathan carried aout Luke,” they say, listening to the wind howling over the ledges.

And then I thought of that other story that Hank Simons told me,—­the one about the mill back of Woodstock caving in from the freshet and burying the miller’s girl.  No one dared lift the timbers until Jonathan crawled in.  The child was pinned down between the beams, and the water rose so fast they feared the wreckage would sweep the mill.  Jonathan clung to the sills waist-deep in the torrent, crept under the floor timbers, and then bracing his back held the beam until he dragged her clear.  It happened a good many years ago, but Hank always claimed it had bent Jonathan’s back.

But, after all, they are not the things I love best to remember of Jonathan.