Winthrop asked him in, and then when he was seated, asked him what he wanted.

“I am wishing to know if you could let me live wiz you a few days —­ I am wanting to be busy in your mountains, about my affairs, and I just want to know if you can let me have a bed to sleep on at night, and a little somet’ing to eat —­ I would be very much obliged and I would pay you whatever you please —­ "

“Mother,” said Winthrop, “can you let this gentleman stay here a few days? he has business in the mountains, he says, and wants to stop here?”

“I do not wish to be no trouble to no person,” he said blandly.  “I was at a little house on de ozer side of de river, but I was told dere was no room for me, and I come to an ozer place and dey told me to come to dis place.  I will not trouble no person —­ I only want a place to put my head while my feet are going all over.”

A moment’s hesitation, and Mrs. Landholm agreed to this very moderate request; and Mr. Herder, as he gave his name, and his valise, were accommodated in the ‘big bedroom.’  This was the best room, occupying one corner of the front of the house, while the ‘keeping-room’ was at the other; a tiny entry-way, of hardly two square yards, lying between, with a door in each of three sides and a steep staircase in the fourth.

Winthrop presently came to ask if the stranger had had supper.

“I have not!  But I will take anysing, what you please to give me.”

Mr. Herder did not belie his beginning.  He made himself much liked, both by the children and the grown people; and as he said, he gave as little trouble as possible.  He seemed a hearty, genial nature, excessively devoted to his pursuits, which were those of a naturalist and kept him out of doors from morning till night; and in the house he shewed a particular simplicity both of politeness and kind feeling; in part springing perhaps from his German nature, and in part from the honest truthful acquaintance he was holding with the world of nature at large.  “He acted like a great boy,” old Karen said in wondering ridicule, —­ “to be bringing in leaves, and sticks, and stones, as he was every night, and making his room such a mess she never saw!”

He had soon a marked liking and even marked respect for his young host.  With his usual good-humour Winthrop helped him in his quest; now and then offered to go with him on his expeditions; tracked up the streams of brooks, shewed the paths of the mountains, rowed up the river and down the river; and often and often made his uncommon strength and agility avail for something which the more burly frame of the naturalist could not have attained.  He was always ready; he was never wearied; and Mr. Herder found him an assistant as acute as he was willing.

“You do know your own woods —­ better than I do!” —­ he remarked one day when Winthrop had helped him out of a botanical difficulty.

“It’s only the knowledge of the eye,” Winthrop replied, with a profound feeling of the difference.