“From New York!” Paul’s face lighted up with pleasure. “But I thought you said you were a trapper?”
“So I am. I came to this country when I left home, twenty years ago, and I’ve been here ever since.”
“And never been home since! How could you stay away from home for twenty years? And New York too? It seems to me I’ve been away for ages, and it’s only half a year. You bet I’ll go back the first chance.”
Amesbury’s face became grave for an instant.
“It’s too long a story--the story of my coming. I’ll tell you about it, perhaps, some time when I’m not so hungry,” and he smiled. “But how about you? What brought you?”
He listened with manifest interest while Paul related the happenings of the weeks just past, and until Dan finally set the pan of fried ptarmigan between the visitors, interrupting with:
“Tea’s ready, sir. Help yourselves t’ th’ pa’tridges an’ bread.”
And while Dan poured the tea and the two men stirred in molasses from the bottle, Amesbury hummed irrelevantly:
“Heigh ding-a-ding, what shall I sing? How many holes has a skimmer? Four and twenty. I’m half starving! Mother, pray give me some dinner.”
Then, as he took a piece of breast from the pan:
“Well, Densmore, the rest of the story. Don’t mind the interruption. It was important. But so is your story. I’m immensely interested.”
The story and dinner were finished together. Amesbury made no comment at once, then while he cut tobacco from a black plug, and stuffed it into his pipe, he repeated:
“O, that I was where I would be, Then would I be where I am not! But where I am I must be, And where I would be I cannot.
“That reference is to you chaps. I wouldn’t be anywhere else if I could, and I wouldn’t have missed this good Christmas dinner and meeting you fellows right here for worlds.”
Reaching for a hot coal he applied it to his pipe, and the pipe lighted he resumed his reclining position, puffing quietly for a moment, when he remarked:
“Old Davy MacTavish is as hard as they make ’em. The company is all there is in the world for him that’s worth while. He’d cut a man’s soul out and throw it to the dogs, if the company would profit by his doing so. Thank God, the factors aren’t all like him.”
“Bad man,” remarked Ahmik, puffing at his pipe.