“He enjoyed poor health,” answered Mrs. Price, after a moment of deliberation, as if she must take time to think. “’Bijah never was one that scattereth, nor yet increaseth.  ‘Liza Jane’s got some memories o’ the past that’s a good deal better than others; but he died somewheres out in Connecticut, or so she heard, and he’s left a very val’able coon dog,—­one he set a great deal by.  ’Liza Jane said, last time he was to home, he priced that dog at fifty dollars.  ’There, now, ‘Liza Jane,’ says I, right to her, when she told me, ’if I could git fifty dollars for that dog, I certain’ would.  Perhaps some o’ the circus folks would like to buy him; they’ve taken in a stream o’ money this day.’  But ’Liza Jane ain’t never inclined to listen to advice.  ’Tis a dreadful poor-spirited-lookin’ creatur’.  I don’t want no right o’ dower in him, myself.”

“A good coon dog’s worth somethin’, certain,” said John York handsomely.

“If he is a good coon dog,” added Isaac Brown.  “I wouldn’t have parted with old Rover, here, for a good deal of money when he was right in his best days; but a dog like him’s like one of the family.  Stop an’ have some supper, won’t ye, Mis’ Price?”—­as the thin old creature was flitting off again.  At that same moment this kind invitation was repeated from the door of the house; and Mrs. Price turned in, unprotesting and always sociably inclined, at the open gate.

II

It was a month later, and a whole autumn’s length colder, when the two men were coming home from a long tramp through the woods.  They had been making a solemn inspection of a wood-lot that they owned together, and had now visited their landmarks and outer boundaries, and settled the great question of cutting or not cutting some large pines.  When it was well decided that a few years’ growth would be no disadvantage to the timber, they had eaten an excellent cold luncheon and rested from their labors.

“I don’t feel a day older’n ever I did when I get out in the woods this way,” announced John York, who was a prim, dusty-looking little man, a prudent person, who had been selectman of the town at least a dozen times.

“No more do I,” agreed his companion, who was large and jovial and open-handed, more like a lucky sea-captain than a farmer.  After pounding a slender walnut-tree with a heavy stone, he had succeeded in getting down a pocketful of late-hanging nuts which had escaped the squirrels, and was now snapping them back, one by one, to a venturesome chipmunk among some little frost-bitten beeches.  Isaac Brown had a wonderfully pleasant way of getting on with all sorts of animals, even men.  After a while they rose and went their way, these two companions, stopping here and there to look at a possible woodchuck’s hole, or to strike a few hopeful blows at a hollow tree with the light axe which Isaac had carried to blaze new marks on some of the line-trees on the farther edge of their possessions.  Sometimes they stopped to admire the size of an old hemlock, or to talk about thinning out the young pines.  At last they were not very far from the entrance to the great tract of woodland.  The yellow sunshine came slanting in much brighter against the tall trunks, spotting them with golden light high among the still branches.