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“Supper’s ready,” she said quietly, and we went in.

George slid out of Jonathan’s arms, smelt about for a soft plank, and fell in a heap on the porch, his chin on his paws, his mean little eyes watching lazily,–speaking to nobody, noticing nobody, sulking all to himself. There he stayed until he caught a whiff of the fragrant, pungent odor of fried trout. Then he cocked one eye and lifted an ear. He must not carry things too far. Next, I heard a single thump of his six-inch tail. George was beginning to get pleased; he always did when there were things to eat.

All this time Jonathan, tired out, sat in his big splint chair at the supper-table. He had been thrashing the brook since daylight,–over his knees sometimes. I could still see the high-water mark on his patched trousers. Another whiff of the frying-pan, and George got up. He dared not poke his nose into Marthy’s lap,–there were too many chunks of wood within easy reach of her hand. So he sidled up to Jonathan, rubbing his nose against his big knees, whining hungrily, looking up into his face.

“I tell ye,” said Jonathan, smiling at me, patting the dog as he spoke, “this yere George hez got more sense’n most men. He knows what’s become of them trout we ketched. I guess he’s gittin’ over the way I treated him to-day. Ye see, we wuz up the East Branch when he run a fox south. Thinks I, the fox’ll take a whirl back and cross the big runway; and, sure enough, it warn’t long afore I heard George a-comin’ back, yippin’ along up through Hank Simons’ holler. So I whistled to him and steered off up onto the maountin’ to take a look at Bog-eddy and try and git a pickerel. When I come daown ag’in, I see George warn’t whar I left him, so I hollered and whistled ag’in. Then, thinks I, you’re mad ’cause I left ye, an’ won’t let on ye kin hear; so I come along hum without him. When I went back a while ago a-lookin’ for him, would yer believe it, thar he wuz a-layin’ in the road, about forty rod this side of Hank Simons’ sugar maples, flat onto his stummick an’ disgusted an’ put out awful. It wuz about all I could do ter git him hum. I knowed the minute I come in fust time an’ see he warn’t here thet his feelin’s wuz hurt ’cause I left him. I presaume mebbe I oughter hollered ag’in afore I got so fer off. Then I thought, of course, he knowed I’d gone to Bog-eddy. Beats all, what sense some dogs hez.”

I never knew Jonathan to lose patience with George but once: that was when the dog tried to burrow into the hole of a pair of chipmunks whom Jonathan loved. They lived in a tree blanketed with moss and lying across the wood road. George had tried to scrape an acquaintance by crawling in uninvited, nearly scaring the little fellows to death, and Jonathan had flattened him into the dry leaves with his big, paddle-like hands. That was before the bear-trap had nipped his tail, but George never forgot it.

He was particularly polite to chipmunks after that. He would lie still by the hour and hear Jonathan talk to them without even a whine of discontent. I watched the old man one morning up beneath the ledges, groping, on his hands and knees, filling his pockets with nuts, and when he reached the wood road, emptying them in a pile near the chipmunk’s tree, George looking on good-naturedly.

“Guess you leetle cunnin’s better hurry up,” he said, while he poured out the nuts on the ground, his knees sticking up as he sat, like some huge grasshopper’s. “Guess ye ain’t got more ‘n time to fill yer cubbud,–winter’s a-comin’! Them leetle birches on Bog-eddy is turnin’ yeller,–that’s the fust sign. ‘Fore ye knows it snow’ll be flyin’. Then whar’ll ye be with everything froze tighter’n Sampson bound the heathen, you cunnin’ leetle skitterin’ pups. Then I presaume likely ye’ll come a-drulin’ raound an’ want me an’ George should gin ye suthin to git through th’ winter on,–won’t they, George?”