Stretching out his stout saw-log legs and settling his big shoulders into the soft cushions made by the sacks, his mind went back to the old sawmill,—­ Baker’s Mill,—­and the dam backed up alongside the East Branch.  An old kingfisher used to sit on a limb over the still water and watch for minnows,—­a blue and white fellow with a sharp beak.  He had frightened him away many a time.  And there was a hole where two big trout lived.  He remembered the willows, too, and the bunch of logs piled as high as the mill.  These would be rolled down and cant-hooked under its saw when the spring opened, but Baker never ground any one of them up into wood pulp.  It went into clapboards to keep out the cold, and shingles to keep off the rain, and the “waste” went under the kettles of the neighbors, the light of the jolly flames dancing round the room.  He had carried many a bundle home himself that the old man had sent to Jonathan.  Most everybody sent Jonathan something, especially if they thought he needed it.

Then his mind reverted to his own share in the whirl about him.  It wasn’t a job he liked, but there wasn’t anything else offering, and then Katie might want somebody to look after her, and so it was just as well he had the job.  He and Katie had been schoolmates together not so long ago, in the wooden schoolhouse near the crossroads.  She had gone to college, and had come home with a diploma.  She was two or three years older than he was, but that didn’t make any difference to a boy and girl from the same village when they had grown up alongside of each other.  He wondered how long it was to July, when he was promised a week,—­and so was Katie.  He knew just what they’d do; he could get two passes to Plymouth,—­his old friend the freight boss had promised him that,—­then about daylight, the time the train arrived, he’d find Marvin, who drove the stage up the valley and past his old home, and help him curry his team and hitch up, and Marvin would give them a ride free.  He could feel the fresh air on his cheeks as he rattled out of the village, across the railroad track and out into the open.  Tim Shekles, the blacksmith, would be at work, and old Mother Crawport would be digging in her garden, early as it was; and out in the fields the crows would be hunting corn; and pretty soon down would go the wheels into the soft, clean gravel of the brook that crossed the turnpike and out again on the other side dripping puddles in the dirt; and soon the big trees would begin, and keep on and on and on,—­away up to the tops of the mountains, the morning sun silvering the mists sweeping up their sides,—­ and—­

“Say! you!  Wake up!  He’s been hollering at you for five minutes.  Git!”

Joe sat up and rubbed his eyes.  The fresh air of the morning had vanished.

“Yes, sir.”  He was on his feet now, alert as a terrier that had sniffed a rat.

“Yes, sir, eh!  How many times do you want me to call you?  Go and find Miss Murdock, and send her here on the run.  Tell her to get her hat and cloak and show up in two minutes.  I’ve got an assignment for her on the East Side,—­just come over the ’phone.  Hurry now!  That damned kid ought to be—­”