“David,” exclaimed Don, putting his hand into his pocket, “we’ve got news for you that will make you wear a different looking face when you hear it.  After you went home, we rode down to see father, and he told us—­Eh!” cried Don, turning quickly toward his brother, who just then gave his arm a sly pinch.

“Let me tell it,” said Bert.  “We’d like to see you at our house this evening about five o’clock; can you come?”

“I reckon I can,” answered David.  “Was that the good news you wanted to tell me?”

“No—­I believe—­yes, it was,” said Don, who received another fearful pinch on the arm and saw his brother looking at him in a very significant way.  “You come up, anyhow.”

“We’ve got some work for you to do up there,” said Bert.  “It will not pay you much at first, but perhaps you can make something out of it by-and-by.  It will keep you busy for two or three weeks, perhaps longer.  Will you come?”

David replied that he would, and turned away with an expression of surprise and disappointment on his face.  The eager, almost excited manner in which Don greeted him, led him to hope that he had something very pleasant and encouraging to tell, and somehow he couldn’t help thinking that his visitors had not said just what they intended to say when they first came up to the fence.

“What in the name of sense and Tom Walker was the matter with you, Bert?” demanded Don, as soon as the two were out of David’s hearing.  “My arm is all black and blue, I know!”

“I didn’t want you to say too much,” was Bert’s reply, “and I didn’t know any other way to stop your talking.  There was a listener close by.”

“A listener!  Who was it?”

“David’s brother.  Just as you began speaking I happened to look toward the cabin, and saw through the cracks between the logs that the window on the other side was open.  Close to one of those cracks, and directly in line with the window, was a head.  I knew it was Dan’s head the moment I saw it.”

“Aha!” exclaimed Don.  “He had his trouble for his pains this time, hadn’t he?  Or, rather, he had the trouble and I had the pain,” he added, rubbing his arm.

Bert laughed and said he thought that was about the way the matter stood.

CHAPTER V.

Dan is astonished.

Many times during his life had David had good reason to be discouraged, but he had never been so strongly tempted to give up trying altogether and settle down into a professional vagabond, as he was when he left General Gordon’s barn and turned his face toward home.  He had relied upon Don to show him a way out of his trouble, but his friend had not helped him at all; he had only made matters worse by telling him more bad news.  Nothing seemed to go right with him.  There was Dan, who never did anything, and yet he was better off in the world and seemed to be just as happy as David, who was always striving to better his condition and continually on the lookout for a chance to earn a dollar or two.  Why should he not stop work and let things take their own course, as his brother did?  He reached home while he was revolving this question in his mind, and the first person he saw when he climbed the fence and walked toward the shingle-pile to resume work upon his traps, was his brother Dan.