"Never mind! We'll make up for it. Only hurry up!" pleaded Dol. "We're like bears, we're so hungry."

"Like bears! You're a sight more like calves with their mouths open, waiting for something to swallow," answered Herb, his eyes flashing impudence, while, with an energy apparently no less brisk than when he started out in the morning, he rushed his preparations for supper.

"Say I'm like a Sukey, and I'll go for you!" roared Dol, a gurgling laugh breaking from him, the first which had been heard since the four struggled through that tangle on Katahdin to a sight of the old camp.

Once or twice during supper the mirth, which had been frozen in each camper's breast by a sight of the drifted wreck of a human life, warmed again spasmodically. Herb did his manly best to fan its flame, though his heart was still pinched by a feeling of double loss.

Later in the evening, when the party were huddling close to the camp-fire, he lifted his right hand and looked at it blankly.

"My!" he gasped, "but it will feel awful queer and empty without Old Blazes. That rifle was a reg'lar corker, boys. I was saving up for three years to buy it. An' it never went back on me. Times when I've gone far off hunting, and had nary a chance to speak to a human for weeks, I'd get to talking to it like as if 'twas a living thing. When I wasn't afeard of scaring game, I'd fire a round to make it answer back and drive away lonesomeness. Folks might ha' thought I was loony, only there was none to see. Well, it's smashed to chips now, 'long with the old camp."

"What awfully selfish jackasses we were, to skip off with our own rifles, and never think of yours, or that you couldn't save it, carrying that poor fellow! I feel like kicking myself," said Cyrus, sharp vexation in his voice. "But that slide business sprang on us so quickly. The sudden rumbling, rattling, and pounding jumbled a fellow's wits. I scarcely understood what was up, even when we were scooting for our lives."

"I felt a bit white-livered myself, I tell ye; and I'm more hardened to slides than you are," was the woodsman's answer.

The confession, taken in the light of his conduct, made him doubly a hero to his city friends.

They thought of him staggering along the mountain, blinded, bewildered, pelted by clay, with that dragging burden in his arms, a heart tossed by danger's keenest realization in his breast. And they were silent before the high courage which can recognize fear, yet refuse to it the mastery.

Neal, whose secret musings were generally crossed by a military thread, seeing that he had chosen the career of a cavalry-soldier, and hoped soon to enter Sandhurst College, stared into the heart of the camp-fire, glowering at fate, because she had not ordained that Herb should serve the queen with him, and wear upon his resolute heart—as it might reasonably be expected he would—the Victoria Cross.

Young Farrar's feeling was so strong that it swept his lips at last.

"Blow it all! Herb," he cried. "It's a tearing pity that you can't come into the English Lancers with me. I don't suppose I'll ever be a V.C., but you would sooner or later as sure as gun's iron."

"A 'V.C.!' What's that?" asked Herb.

"A Vigorous Christian, to be sure!" put in Cyrus, who was progressive and peaceful, teasingly.

But the English boy, full of the dignity of the subject to him, summoned his best eloquence to describe to the American backwoodsman that little cross of iron, Victoria's guerdon, which entitles its possessor to write those two notable letters after his name, and which only hero-hearts may wear.

But a vision of himself, stripped of "sweater" and moccasins, in cavalry rig, becrossed and beribboned, serving under another flag than the Stars and Stripes, was too much for Herb's gravity and for the grim regrets which wrung him to-night.

"Oh, sugar!" he gasped; and his laughter was like a rocket shooting up from his mighty throat, and exploding in a hundred sparkles of merriment.

He laughed long. He laughed insistently. His comrades were won to join in.

When the fun had subsided, Garst said:—

"Herb Heal, old man, there's something in you to-night which reminds me of a line I'm rather stuck on."

"Let's have it!" cried Herb.

And Cyrus quoted:—

"As for this here earth, It takes lots of laffin' to keep things even!"

"Now you've hit it! The man that wrote that had a pile o' sense. Come, boys, it's been an awful full day. Let's turn in!"

As he spoke, Herb began to replenish the fire, and make things snug in the camp for the night.

But shortly after, when he threw himself on the spuce-boughs near them, the boys heard him murmur, deep in his throat, as if he took strength from the words:—

"It takes lots of laffin' to keep things even!"



CHAPTER XXV.

A LITTLE CARIBOU QUARREL.

But things on this old planet seemed even enough the next day, when, after a dozen hours of much needed sleep, the campers' eyes opened upon a scene which might have stirred any sluggish blood—and they were not sluggards.

A fresh breath of frost was in the air to quicken circulation and hunger. Under a smiling sun an October breeze frolicked through leaves with tints of fire and gold, humming, while it swiftly skimmed over their beauties, as if it was reading a wind's poem of autumn.

Katahdin looked as though it had suddenly taken on the white crown of age, with age's stately calm. The weather had grown colder during the night. Summer—the balmy Indian summer, with its late spells of sultriness—had taken a weeping departure yesterday. To-day there was no threatening of rain-storm or slide. The mountain's principal peaks had fleecy wraps of snow.

"Ha! Old Katahdin has put on its nightcap," exclaimed Cyrus, when the trio issued from their tent in the morning. "Listen, you fellows! This is the 21st of October. I propose that we start back to our home-camp to-morrow. It will take us two days to reach Millinokett Lake. Then we'll set our faces towards civilization the first week in November, or thereabouts."

"Oh, bother it! So soon!" protested Dol.

"Now, Young Rattlebrain,"—Garst took the calm tone of leadership,—"please consider that this is the first time you've camped out in Maine woods. You might find it fun to be snowed up in camp during a first fall, and to tramp homewards through a thawing slush. But your father wouldn't relish its effects on your British constitution. And out here—once we're well into November—there's no knowing when the temperature may drop to zero with mighty short notice. I've often turned in at night, feeling as if I were on 'India's coral strands' and woke up next morning thinking I had popped off in my sleep to 'Greenland's icy mountains.' Herb Heal! you know what tricks a thermometer, if we had one, might play in our camp from this out; talk sense to these fellows."

Herb, who had risen an hour before his charges, had already fetched fresh water, coaxed up the fire, and was busily mixing flapjacks for breakfast. His ears, however, had caught the drift of the talk.

"Guess Cyrus is right," he said. "Seeing as it's the first time you Britishers have slept off your spring mattresses, I'd say, light out for the city and steam-heat afore the snow comes. Oh! you needn't get your mad up. I ain't thinking you'd growl at being snowed in. I know better.

"By the great horn spoon! I b'lieve I'll go right along to Greenville with you," exclaimed the guide a minute later. "I might get a chance to pick up a bargain of a second-hand rifle there. And I guess you'd be mighty sick o' your luck, Dol, if you had to lug them moose-antlers part o' the way yerself. I ain't stuck on carrying 'em either, if we can get a jumper."

But there was a third reason, still more powerful than these two, why he should make a trip to the distant town, which stirred Herb's mind while he stirred his cakes. His sturdy sense told him that it would be well he should put in an appearance when Cyrus made a statement before the Greenville coroner as to the cause and manner of Chris's death.

"Now, you boys, we don't want no fooling this blessed day," he said, when breakfast was in order, and the campers were emptying for the second time their tin mugs of coffee. "There's sport before us—tearing good sport. Whatever do you s'pose I come on this morning when I was cruising over the bog for water? Caribou-tracks! Caribou-tracks, as sure as there's a caribou in Maine!

"Who's for following 'em? We hain't got much provisions left; and I guess a chunk of broiled caribou-steak about as big as a horse's upper lip would cheer each of us up, and make us feel first-rate. What say, boys?"

"By all that's glorious!" ejaculated Cyrus, his eyes striking light. "Caribou-signs! Of course we'll follow them. A bit of fresh meat would be pretty acceptable, and a good view of a herd of caribou would be still more so—to me, at any rate. That would just about top off our exploring to a T."

"We've got to be mighty spry, then," said the woodsman, lurching to his feet, muscles swelling, and nostrils spreading like a sleuth-hound's. "If you want caribou, you've got to take 'em while they're around. Old hunters have a saying: 'They're here to-day, to-morrow nowhere.' And that's about the size of it."

"Let's start off this minute!" Dol jerked out the words while he bolted the last salt shreds of his pork. "Hurry up, you fellows! You're as slow as snails. I'd eat the jolliest meal that was ever cooked in three minutes."

"No wonder you squirm and shout all night, then, until sane people with good digestions feel ready to blow your head off," laughed Cyrus, who was one of the laggards; but he disposed of the last mouthfuls of his own meal with little regard for his digestive canal.

In rather less than twenty minutes the four were scanning with wide eyes certain fresh foot-marks, plainly printed on a patch of soft oozing clay, midway on the boggy tract.

"Whew! Bless me! Those caribou-tracks?" Cyrus caught his breath with amazement while he crouched to examine them. "Why, they're bigger than any moose-tracks we've seen!"

"Isn't that great?" gasped Dol.

"Well, come to think of it, it is," answered the guide, in the stealthy tones of an expectant hunter; "for a full-grown bull-caribou don't stand so high as a full-sized moose by two or three feet, and he don't weigh more'n half as much. Still, for all that, caribou deer beat every other animal of the deer tribe, so far's I know, in the size of their hoofs, as you'll see bime-by if luck's with us! And my stars! how they scud along on them big hoofs. I'd back 'em in a race against the smartest of your city chaps that ever spun through Maine on his new-fangled 'wheel,' that he's so sot on."

Garst, who was an enthusiastic cyclist, with a gurgle of unbelieving mirth, prepared to dispute this. There might have ensued a wordy sparring about caribou versus bicycle, had not the guide been impressed with the necessity for prompt action at the expense of speech.

"We must quit our talk and get a move on," he whispered, and led the forward march across the bog, his eyes every now and again narrowing into two gleaming slits, as if he were debating within himself, while he studied the ground or some bush which showed signs of being nibbled or trampled. Then he would sweep the horizon with long-range vision.

But not a tuft of hair or glancing horn hove in sight.

The marsh was left behind. The hoof-marks were lost in a wide meadowy sweep of open ground, bounded at a distance by an irregular line of hills, sparsely covered with spruce-trees.

Towards these Herb headed, leaving Katahdin away back in the rear.

"'Shaw! I'm afeard they're 'nowhere' by this time," he whispered, when the hunters reached the rising ground, glancing at Dol, who stepped lightly beside him.

The boy's lips parted to breathe out compressed disappointment; but his answer was lost in a sharp whirr! whirr! and a sudden flutter of wings above his head. His eyes went aloft towards a bough about eight feet from the ground. So did Herb's, and lit with a new, whimsical hope.

"A spruce partridge!" hissed the guide, his voice thrilling even in its stealthy whisper. "That's luck—dead sure! The Injuns say, 'The red eye never tells a lie;'" and the woodsman pointed out the strip of bare red skin above the beady eyes of the bird, which cuddled itself on its branch, and looked down at them unfrighted.

Dol Farrar, who in this region of moose-birds and moose-calls could believe in anything, felt both his spirits and credulity rise together. He managed to keep abreast of the trained hunter, as the latter, with swift, stretching, silent steps climbed the hill. And he heard the hunter's sudden cluck of triumph as he reached the top, and looked down upon the valley at the other side, the inarticulate sound being followed by one softly rung word,—

"Caribou!"

"Caribou? They look awfully like quiet Alderney cows, except for the big antlers!" The amazed exclamation stirred the English boy's tongue, but he did not make it audible.

Following Herb's example, he stretched himself flat upon his stomach under a spruce, and stared over the brow of the hill at a forest pantomime which was being acted in the valley.

Cautiously slipping from tree to tree, Cyrus and Neal, who had lagged a few steps behind, joined the leaders, and lay low, eagerly gazing too.

On its farther side the hill was yet more sparsely covered, the scattered spruces showing gaps between them where the lumberman's axe had made havoc. Through these openings, which were as shafts of light amid the evergreen's waving play, the hunters saw the sun silver a brown pool in the valley. A few maples and birches waved their shrivelling splendors of scarlet and buff at irregular distances from the water. And in and out among these trees moved in graceful woodland frolic four or five large animals,—perhaps more,—their doings being plainly seen by the watchers on the hill.

Their coats, like those of the smaller deer, were of a brown which seemed to have caught its dye from the autumnal tints surrounding them. In shape they justified Dol's criticism; for they certainly were not unlike cows of the Alderney breed, save for the widely branching horns.

Of the strength of these antlers the hidden spectators got sudden, startling proof, as the two largest caribou drew off from the rest, and charged each other in a real or sham fight, the battle-clang of their meeting horns sounding far away to the hill-top.

"Them two bulls are having a big time of it. Look at 'em now, with the small one. That's a stranger in the herd," hummed Herb into the ear of the boy next to him, his voice so light and even that it might have been but the murmur of a falling leaf. "It's an all-fired pity that we're jest too far off for a shot."

The "stranger," which the woodsman's long-range eye had singled out, was of a smaller size and paler color than the other caribou; and Herb—who could interpret the forest pantomime far better than he would have explained the acting of human beings on a stage—told his companions in whispers and signs that it was in distressed dread of its company.

The attentions which the rest paid to it seemed at first only friendly and facetious. The two big bulls, after trying their mettle against each other for a minute, separated, and moved towards it, prodded it lightly with their horns, and playfully bit its sides, a sport in which the other members of the herd joined.

"They're playing it, like a cat with a mouse; but I guess they'll murder it in the long run if it's sickly or weak. Caribou are the biggest bullies in these woods—to each other," whispered Herb.

"By the great horn spoon! they're doing for it now," he gasped, a minute later. "Sho!... if I only had my old Winchester here, I'd soon stop their lynching. Try it, you, Cyrus! You're a sure shot, an' you can creep within a hundred yards of 'em without being scented. Try it, man!"

The guide's flashing eyes and quick signs conveyed half his meaning; his excited sentences were so low that Garst only caught fag-ends of them. But they were emphasized unexpectedly by a faint bleating sound rising from the valley,—the helpless bleat of a buffeted creature.

"We want meat, and I'm going to spring a surprise on those bullies," muttered Cyrus, setting his teeth.

Still lying flat, he shot his eyes down the hill-slope, forming a plan of descent; then he lifted the rifle beside him, and jammed some fresh cartridges into the magazine.

Ere a dozen long breaths had been drawn, he was stealthily moving towards the valley, slipping from spruce to spruce—an arrowlike, unnoticeable figure in his dark gray tweeds.

He was close to the foot of the hill when the three breathless fellows above saw him raise his rifle, just as the unfortunate little caribou, after many efforts to escape, had been beaten to its knees.

"He'll drop one, sure! He's a crack shot—is Cyrus! There! he's drawing bead. Bravo!... he's floored the biggest!"

Herb's gusty breath blew the sentences through his nostrils, while the sudden, explosive bang of the Winchester cut through all other sounds, and set the air a-quiver.

Twice Cyrus fired.

The largest bull-caribou leaped three feet upward, wheeled about, staggered to his knees. A third shot stopped his bullying forever.

"Hurrah! I guess you've got the leader—the best of the herd. That other bull was a buster too! You might ha' dropped him, if you'd been in the humor!" bellowed the guide, springing to his legs, and letting out his pent-up wind in a full-blast roar of triumph.

He well knew that Cyrus, "being a queer specimen sportsman," and the right sort after all, would be satisfied with the one inevitable deed of death.

As their leader fell, the caribou raised their heads, stared in stiffened wonder for a few seconds, offering a steady mark for the smoking rifle if it had been in the grasp of a butcher. Then, as though propelled by one shock, they cut for the wood at dazzling speed.

A minute—and they were in the distance as tufts of hair blown before a storm-wind.

The half-killed weakling sought shelter more slowly in another direction.

"Well done, Cy!"

"Congratulations, old man!"

"You've got a trophy now. You'll never leave this splendid head behind. My eye, what antlers!"

Such were the exclamations blown to Garst's ears by the hot breath of his English friends, as they reached his side, and stooped with him to examine the fallen forest beauty.

"No; I guess we can manage to haul the head back to camp, with as much meat as we need. You'll have your 'chunk of caribou-steak as big as a horse's upper lip,' to-night, Herb, and bigger if you want it. I'm tickled at getting the antlers, especially as I didn't shoot this beauty for the sake of them. I'll hook them on my shoulders when we start back to Millinokett to-morrow."

So answered the successful hunter, tingling with some pride in the skill which, because of his reverence for all life, he generally kept out of sight.

And he stuck to his purpose about the antlers.

* * * * *

Cheered and invigorated by a sumptuous supper and breakfast of broiled caribou-steaks, supplemented by Herb's lightest cakes, and carrying some of the meat with them as provision for the way, the campers accomplished their backward tramp to the log camp on Millinokett Lake in fulness of strength and spirits.

Once or twice during the journey, when the guide was stalking ahead, and thought himself unnoticed, the city fellows saw him lift his right hand and look at it for a full minute. Then it swung heavily back to his side.

"He's missing his rifle, the partner that never went back on him," said Cyrus. "Say, boys! I've got an idea!"

"Out with it if it's worth anything," grunted Dol. "I never have ideas these days. Too much doing. I don't feel as if there was a steady peg in me to hang one on."

"Oh! quit your nonsense, Chick, and listen. Herb will wait for us in a few minutes," was the Boston man's impatient rejoinder.

Then followed a low-toned consultation, in the course of which such talk as this was heard:—

"Our Pater will want to shell out when he hears about Chris."

"So will mine. He'll be for sending Herb a cool five hundred or thousand dollars, right away. And, as likely as not, Herb would feel flaring mad, and ready to chuck it in his face. He's not the sort of fellow to stand being paid by an outsider for a plucky act, done in the best hour of his life."

"Oh, I say! wouldn't it be decenter to manage the thing ourselves, without letting anybody who doesn't know him meddle in it?" This suggestion was in Dol's voice. "Neal and I could draw our allowances for three months in advance; the Pater will be willing enough. We'll be precious hard up without them, but we'll rub through somehow. Then you can chip in an even third, Cy, and we'll order an A I rifle,—the best ever invented, from the best company in America,—silver plate, with his name,—and all the rest of it. I'd swamp my allowance for a year to see Herb's face when he gets it."

"That's the plan! You do have occasional moments of wisdom, Dol; I'll say that much for you," commented the leader. "Well, Herb has taken a special sort of liking to you. You may tip him a hint to wait in Greenville for a few days, and not to go looking for second-hand rifles till he hears from us. Better not say anything until we're just parting. Ten to one, though, you'll blurt the whole thing out in some harebrained minute, or give it away in your sleep."

"Blow me if I do!" answered Dol solemnly.



CHAPTER XXVI.

DOC AGAIN.

Herb, turning back at that minute to wait for his party, experienced a shock of curiosity which was new to him, at seeing the three in close counsel, shouldering each other upon a trail a couple of feet wide.

But the sensation passed. Dol for once was not guilty of an indiscretion, waking or sleeping. The woodsman got no hint of what matter had been discussed until more than two weeks later, when he stood in the main street of Greenville, beside a tanned, muscular, newly shaven trio, waiting for their departure for Boston.

A few pleasant days, marked by no particular excitements, had been spent at the log camp on Millinokett after that wonderful trip into the forests of Katahdin. Then the weather turned suddenly blustering and cold; and Cyrus, as captain, ordered an immediate forced march to Greenville.

Under Herb's guidance that march was made with singularly few hardships. He managed to hire a "jumper" from a new settler who had a farm a couple of miles from their camp. This contrivance was a rough sort of sled, formed of two stout ash saplings, and hitched to a courageous horse. The "jumper's" one merit was that it could travel along many a rough trail where wheels would be splintered at the outset. But since, as Herb said, it went at "a succession of dead jumps," no camper was willing to trust his bones to its tender mercies. However, it answered admirably for carrying the tent, knapsacks, and trophies of the party, tightly strapped in place, including Neal's bear-skin, which was duly called for, and the moose-antlers, more precious in Dol's sight than if they had been made of beaten gold.

Thus the campers journeyed homeward with their backs as light as their spirits, caring little for the chills of a couple of nights spent under canvas and rubber coverings.

Two gala evenings they had,—one with Uncle Eb in his bark hut near Squaw Pond, where they were regaled with a sumptuous supper, for "coons war in eatin' order now;" and the second with Doctor Phil Buck at his little frame house near Moosehead Lake.

Dear old Doc was as ever a power,—a power to welcome, uplift, entertain.

The campers sought him immediately on their arrival at Greenville; and he stood by them while Cyrus made a full statement before the local coroner about the death and burial of the half-breed, Chris Kemp, the Farrars and Herb confirming what was said with due dignity.

But dignity was blown to the four winds by the very unprofessional and very woodsman-like cheer that Doc raised, and that was echoed thunderously by Joe Flint and a few other guides and loungers who had collected to hear the story, when Cyrus described the splendid rush which Herb made, with the dying man in his arms, and the clay of the landslide half smothering him.

"I'm sorry I wasn't near to try and do something for the poor fellow," said the doctor, later on, when his friends were gathered round a blazing wood-fire in his own snug house. "But I doubt if I could have helped him. I guess he was born with the hankering for whiskey, and when that is in the mongrel blood of a half-breed it is pretty sure to wreck him some time. We must leave him to God, boys, and to changes larger than we know."

"I've a letter for you, Neal," added the host presently in a lighter tone. "It was directed to my care. It is from Philadelphia, from Royal Sinclair, I think."

Neal slit the envelope which was handed to him, and read the few lines it contained aloud, with a longing burst of laughter.

Royal was as short with his pen as he was dash-away with his tongue. The letter was a brief but pressing invitation to Cyrus and the Farrars to visit their camping acquaintances of the Maine wilds at the Sinclairs' home in Philadelphia before the English boys recrossed the Atlantic.

"Come you must!" wrote Roy. "We've promised to give a big spread, and invite all the crowd we train with to meet you. We'll have a great old time, and bring out our best yarns. Don't let me catch you refusing!"



"We won't if we can help it," commented Neal; "if only we can coax the Pater to give us another week in jolly America."

The campers slept upon mattresses that night for the first time in many weeks.

The following morning saw them grouped in the main street of Greenville, with Doc and Herb on hand for a final farewell, waiting for the departure of the coach which was to bear them a little part of the way towards Boston civilization.

Dol was turning over in his jostled thoughts the delicate wording of the hint which he was to convey to Herb about the rifle, when he became aware that Doctor Phil was pinching his shoulder, and saying, while he drew Neal's attention in the same way:—

"Well, you fellows! I'm glad to have known you. If you ever come to Maine again, remember that there's one old forest fogy who'll have a delightful welcome for you in his house or camp, not to speak of the thing he calls his heart. And I hope you'll keep a pleasant corner in your memories for our Pine Tree State, and for American States generally, so far as you've seen them."

Dol tried to answer; but recalling the evening when, wrecked at heart, with stinging feet, he had stumbled at last into the trail to Doc's camp, he could only mutter, "Dash it all!" and rub his leaking eyes.

"Of course I'll think in an hour from now of all the things I want to say," began Neal helplessly, and stopped. "But I'll tell you how I feel, Doc," he added, with a sudden rush of breath: "I think I can never see your Stars and Stripes again without taking off my hat to them, and feeling that they're about equal to my own flag."

"Neatly put, Neal! I couldn't have done it better," laughed Cyrus.

"Shake!" and Doc offered his hand in a heart-grip, while the hairs on it bristled. "Boy! long life to that feeling. You men who are now being hatched will show us one day what Young England and Young America, as a grand brotherhood under comrade flags, can do to give this old earth a lift which she has never had yet towards peace and prosperity. We're looking to you for it!"

"Hur-r-r-rup!" cheered Herb, subduing his shout to the requirements of a settlement, but sending his battered hat some ten feet into the air, and recovering it with a dexterous shoot of his long arm, by way of giving his friends an inspiring send-off.

"Tell you what it is!" he said suddenly, turning upon the Farrars, "I never guided Britishers till now; but, wherever you sprung from, you're clean grit. If a man is that, it don't matter a whistle to me what country riz him."

A few minutes afterwards, with a jingle, jangle, lurch, and rattle, the stage-coach was swaying its way out of Greenville. Dol, stooping from his seat upon it, gripped the guide's hand in a wringing good-by.

"Herb," he said, "we three fellows want you to stay here for a few days, and not to do anything about a second-hand rifle until you hear from us. Mind!"

And so it happened that, ten days or so later, while the three were enjoying the hospitalities of the Sinclairs and "their crowd" in the Quaker City, Herb, who was still in Greenville, waiting for a fresh engagement as guide, was accosted by the driver of the coach from Bangor.

"Herb Heal, here's a bully parcel for you," said the Jehu, with a knowing grin. "Came from Boston, I guess. I war booked to take pertik'lar care of it."

And Herb, feeling his strong fingers tingle, undid many wrappers, and hauled out, before the eyes of Greenville loungers, a rifle such as it is the desire of every Maine woodsman's heart to possess.

A best grade, 45-90, half-magazine Winchester it was, fitted with shot-gun stock and Lyman sights, and bearing a gleaming silver plate, on which was prettily lettered:—

HERB HEAL IN MEMORY OF OCTOBER, 1891.

Underneath was engraved a miniature pine, its trunk bearing three sets of initials.

Herb stalked straight off a distance of one mile to Doctor Buck's house, pushed the door open as if it had been the door of a wilderness camp, and shot himself into Doc's little study.

"Look what those three gamy fellows have sent me," he said; and his eyes were now like Millinokett Lake under a full sun-burst. "I thought the old one was a corker, but this"—

Here the woodsman's dictionary gave out.



CHAPTER XXVII.

CHRISTMAS ON THE OTHER SIDE.

"'Christmas, 1893.' Those last two figures are a bit crooked; aren't they, Dol?" said a tall, soldierly fellow, who was no longer a boy, yet could scarcely in his own country call himself a man.

He read the date critically, having fixed it as the centre-piece in a festive arch of holly and bunting, which spanned the hall of a mansion in Victoria Park, Manchester.

"I believe that's better," he added, straightening a tipsy "93," and bounding from a chair-back on which he was perched, to step quickly backward, with a something in gait and bearing that suggested a cavalry swing.

"'Christmas, 1893,'" he read musingly again. "Goodness! to think it's two years since we laid eyes on old Cyrus, and that he has landed on English soil before this, may be here any minute—and Sinclair too. I guess"—these two words were brought out with a smile, as if the speaker was putting himself in touch with the happiness of a by-gone time—"I guess that 'Star-Spangled Banner' will look home-like to them."

And Neal Farrar, just back for a short vacation from Sandhurst Military College, twice gravely saluted the gay bunting with which his Christmas arch was draped, where the Union Jack of old England kissed the American Stars and Stripes.

"I say!" he exclaimed, turning to a tall youth, who had been inspecting his operations, "that Liverpool train must be beastly late, Dol. Those fellows ought to be here before this. The Mater will be in a stew. She ordered dinner at five, as the youngsters dine with us, of course, to-day, and it's past that now."

"Hush! will you? I'll vow that cab is stopping! Yes! By all that's splendid, there they are!" and Dol Farrar's joy-whoop rang through the English oaken hall with scarcely less vehemence than it had rung in former days through the dim aisles of the Maine forests.

A sound of spinning cab-wheels abruptly stopping, a noise of men's feet on the steps outside, and the hall-door was flung wide by two pairs of welcoming hands.

"Cyrus! Royal! Got here at last? Oh! but this is jolly."

"Neal, dear old boy, how goes it? Dol, you're a giant. I wouldn't have known you."

Such were the most coherent of the greetings which followed, as two visitors, in travelling rig, their faces reddened by eight days at sea in midwinter, crossed the threshold.

There could be no difficulty in recognizing Cyrus Garst's well-knit figure and speculative eyes, though a sprouting beard changed somewhat the lower part of his face. And if Royal Sinclair's tall shoulders and brand-new mustache were at all unfamiliar, anybody who had once heard the click and hum of his hasty tongue would scarcely question his identity.

The Americans had steamed over the Atlantic amid bluster of elements, purposing a tour through southern France and Italy. And they were to take part, before proceeding to the Continent, in the festivities of an English Christmas at the Farrars' home in Manchester.

"Oh, but this is jolly!" cried Neal again, his voice so thickened by the joy of welcome that—embryo cavalry man though he was—he could bring out nothing more forceful than the one boyish exclamation.

Dol's throat was freer. Sinclair and he raised a regular tornado in the handsome hall. Questions and answers, only half distinguishable, blew between them, with explosions of laughter, and a thunder of claps on each other's shoulders. When their gale was at its noisiest, Royal's part of it abruptly sank to a dead calm, stopped by "an angel unawares."

A girl of sixteen, with hair like the brown and gold of a pheasant's breast, opened a drawing-room door, stepped to Neal's side, and whispered,—

"Introduce me!"

"My sister," said Neal, recovering self-possession. "Myrtle, I believe I'll let you guess for yourself which is Garst and which is Sinclair."

"Well, I've heard so much about you for the past two years that I know you already, all but your looks. So I'm sure to guess right," said Myrtle Farrar, scrutinizing the Americans with a pretty welcoming glance, then giving to each a glad hand-shake.

Royal's tongue grew for once less active than his eyes, which were so caught by the golden shades on the pheasant-like head that for a minute he could see nothing else. Even Cyrus, who was accustomed to look upon himself as the cool-blooded senior among his band of intimates, tingled a little.

"You're just in time for dinner—I'm so glad," laughed Miss Myrtle. "A Christmas dinner with a whole tribe of Farrars, big and little."

"But our baggage hasn't come on yet," answered Garst ruefully. "Will Mrs. Farrar excuse our appearing in travelling rig?"

"Indeed she will!" answered for herself a fair, motherly-looking English woman, as pretty as Myrtle save for the gold-brown hair, while she came a few steps into the hall to welcome her sons' friends.

Five minutes afterwards the Americans found themselves seated at a table garlanded with red-berried holly, trailing ivy, and pearl-eyed mistletoe, and surrounded by a round dozen of Farrars, including several youngsters whose general place was in schoolroom or nursery, but who, even to a tot of three, were promoted to dine in splendor on Christmas Day.

"Well, this is festive!" remarked Cyrus to Myrtle, who sat next to him, when, after much preparatory feasting, an English plum-pudding, wreathed, decorated, and steaming, came upon the scene. Fluttering amid the almonds which studded its top were two wee pink-stemmed flags. And here again, in compliment to the newly arrived guests, the "Star-Spangled Banner" kissed the English Union Jack.

"Say, Neal!" exclaimed Cyrus, his eyes keenly bright as he looked at the toy standards, "wouldn't this sort of thing delight our friend Doc? By the way, that reminds me, I have a package for you from him, and a message from Herb Heal too. Herb wants to know 'when those gamy Britishers are coming out to hunt moose again?' And Doc has sent you a little bundle of beaver-clippings. They are from an ash-tree two feet in circumference, felled by that beaver colony which we came across near the brulee where you shot your bear and covered yourself with glory. Doc asked you to put the wood in sight on Christmas Night, and to think of the Maine woods."

"Think of them!" Neal ejaculated. "Bless the dear old brick! does he think we could ever forget them and the stunning times we had in camp and on trail?"

THE END