Well, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy returned, and early one morning we started with a wagon and a bulging mess-box for Zebbie’s home.  We were going a new and longer route in order to take the wagon.  Dandelions spread a carpet of gold.  Larkspur grew waist-high with its long spikes of blue.  The service-bushes and the wild cherries were a mass of white beauty.  Meadowlarks and robins and bluebirds twittered and sang from every branch, it almost seemed.  A sky of tenderest blue bent over us and fleecy little clouds drifted lazily across....  Soon we came to the pineries, where we traveled up deep gorges and canons.  The sun shot arrows of gold through the pines down upon us and we gathered our arms full of columbines.  The little black squirrels barked and chattered saucily as we passed along, and we were all children together.  We forgot all about feuds and partings, death and hard times.  All we remembered was that God is good and the world is wide and beautiful.  We plodded along all day.  Next morning there was a blue haze that Zebbie said meant there would be a high wind, so we hurried to reach his home that evening.

The sun was hanging like a great red ball in the smoky haze when we entered the long canon in which is Zebbie’s cabin.  Already it was dusky in the canons below, but not a breath of air stirred.  A more delighted man than Zebbie I never saw when we finally drove up to his low, comfortable cabin.  Smoke was slowly rising from the chimney, and Gavotte, the man in charge, rushed out and the hounds set up a joyful barking.  Gavotte is a Frenchman, and he was all smiles and gesticulations as he said, “Welcome, welcome!  To-day I am rejoice you have come.  Yesterday I am despair if you have come because I am scrub, but to-day, behold, I am delight.”

I have heard of clean people, but Gavotte is the cleanest man I ever saw.  The cabin floor was so white I hated to step upon it.  The windows shone, and at each there was a calico curtain, blue-and-white check, unironed but newly washed.  In one window was an old brown pitcher, cracked and nicked, filled with thistles.  I never thought them pretty before, but the pearly pink and the silvery green were so pretty and looked so clean that they had a new beauty.  Above the fireplace was a great black eagle which Gavotte had killed, the wings outspread and a bunch of arrows in the claws.  In one corner near the fire was a washstand, and behind it hung the fishing-tackle.  Above one door was a gun-rack, on which lay the rifle and shotgun, and over the other door was a pair of deer-antlers.  In the center of the room stood the square home-made table, every inch scrubbed.  In the side room, which is the bedroom, was a wide bunk made of pine plank that had also been scrubbed, then filled with fresh, sweet pine boughs, and over them was spread a piece of canvas that had once been a wagon sheet, but Gavotte had washed it and boiled and pounded it until it was clean and sweet.  That served for a sheet.