Young Dan found Andy Mace splitting stove-wood beside the back-door of his primitive habitation. Andy had lived a great many years—eighty or perhaps as many as eighty-five—and most of them rough. His joints were not as supple as they had been thirty years ago, but he was still an able man and a first-class hand at all forms of sylvan activity. Experience had taught him the easiest way of doing everything well, and his inherent and acquired wisdom saw to it that he made the most of that knowledge. This fact was demonstrated even in his present employment. The round sticks of dry maple and birch fell apart under the lightest strokes of his axe in a manner that suggested magic to Young Dan.
“You do that slick, Mr. Mace,” said the young man.
“Well, I’d ought to, at my time o’ life,” replied Andy, straightening his back slowly. “I’ve been splittin’ wood nigh onto a hundred years, off and on, so it’s no more’n to be expected that I’d be a purty slick hand at the job by now.”
“I got a letter here from Uncle Bill Tangler, and if you’ll read it I won’t have to tell you what’s in it,” said Young Dan.
“That sounds reasonable,” replied the old man, taking the letter and seating himself on the chopping-block.
He fished a pair of spectacles from a hip-pocket and donned them with great care. He chuckled now and again as he read the letter.
“Smart boy. Bill Tangler,” he said at last. “Knows timber and folks, he does; and I larned him purty nigh all he knows about timber. We’ve cruised the woods together months on end, him and me.”
“Will you be my partner, Mr. Mace, and go up to Uncle Bill’s camp with me to trap fur all winter?”
“I sure will, Young Dan. I ain’t got hoof nor claw o’ livestock, and this old house is used to bein’ empty, so I cal’late we’d best start upstream bright and early to-morrow mornin’. I’ll call at yer place about seven o’clock, if that’ll suit ye.”
“So we’re pardners, you and me. What I got in here will just about offset the camp.” Andy pressed a finger-tip to his forehead. “We’ll figger out the cost o’ grub come spring, and I’ll pay ye my half in good green money. Folks hereabouts name me for a rich miser behind my back, as ye’ve heared with yer own ears like enough, Young Dan; and that’s because I’m a bach, and live in a log house, and let my whiskers grow. Well, boy, they’re dead wrong about me bein’ a miser. I’d smoke ten-cent seegars if they tasted as good to me as a pipe, and it ain’t the cost o’ city life that keeps me from movin’ to Harlow or Centreville or to Noo York. No, sir-ee! I live here like I do because it is the place and the way that suits my tastes; and I’d still do it if it cost me twenty dollars every week. You ask Bill Tangler. We took a ja’nt once to the Sportsman’s Show in Noo York, him and me together. Ask yer Uncle Bill about me bein’ a miser.”