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We drove on in silence, Jim taking in everything we passed. This shambling, slenderly educated, and clay-soiled man was fast looming up as a find of incalculable value–the most valuable of my experience. The most important thing, however, was still to be settled if a perfect harmony of interests was to be established between us–would he like me?

Marvin’s cabin, in which I was to spend my holiday, lay on a clearing half a mile or more outside the woods and at the foot of a hill that helped prop up the Knob. The stage road ran to the left. The house was a small two-story affair built of logs and clapboards, and was joined to the outlying stable by a covered passage which was lined with winter firewood. Marvin, who met us at the pasture-gate, carried a lantern, the glow of the twilight having faded from the mountain-tops. He was a small, thick-set man, smooth-shaven as far as the under side of his chin and jaws, with a whisk-broom beard spread over his shirt-front and half of his waistcoat. His forehead was low, and his eyes set close together–sure sign of a close-fisted nature.

To my great surprise his first words, after a limp handshake and a perfunctory “pleased to see you,” were devoted to an outbreak on Jim for having been so long on the road. “Been waitin’ here an hour,” he said. “What in tarnation kep’ ye, anyway? Them cows ain’t milked yit!”

“Don’t worry. I won’t go back on them cows,” replied Jim, quietly, as he drove through the gateway, following Marvin, who walked ahead swinging the lantern to show the mare the road.

Mrs. Marvin’s manner was as abrupt as that of her husband.

“Well, well!” she said, as I stepped upon the porch, “guess you must be beat out comin’ so fur. Come in and set by the stove,” and she resumed her work in the pantry without another word.

I was not offended at her curtness. These denizens of the forest pass too many hours alone and speak too seldom to understand the value of politeness for politeness’ sake. The wife, moreover, redeemed herself the next morning when I found her on the back porch feeding the birds.

“Snow ain’t fur off,” she remarked, in explanation, as she scattered the crumbs about, “and I want ’em to larn early where they kin find something to eat. Ruby’d never forgive me if I didn’t feed the birds. She loves ’em ’bout as much as Jim does.”

Neither she nor her husband became any more cordial as they knew me better. To them I was only the boarder whose weekly stipend helped to decrease the farm debt, and who had to be fed three times a day and given a bed at night. It was Jim who made me feel at home. He was the fellow I had longed for; the round peg of a chance acquaintance that exactly fitted into the round hole of my holiday life, and he fulfilled my every expectation. He would fish or hunt or carry a sketch-trap or wash brushes, or loaf, or go to sleep beside me–or get up at daylight–whatever the one half of me wanted to do, Jim, the other half, agreed to with instant cheerfulness.

And yet, in spite of this constant companionship, I never crossed a certain line of reserve which he had set up between us. He would ramble on by the hour about the things around us; about the trees, the birds, and squirrels; of the way the muskrats lived by the sawmill dam, and their cleverness in avoiding his traps; about the deer that “yarded” back of Taft’s Knob last winter, and their leanness in the spring. Sometimes he would speak of Mother Marvin, saying she “thought a heap of Ruby, and ought to,” and now and then he would speak of Ruby with a certain tender tone in his voice, telling me of the prizes she had won at school, and how nobody could touch her in “‘rithmetic and readin’.” But, to my surprise, he never discussed any of his private affairs with me. I say “surprise,” for until I met Jim I had found that men of his class talked of little else, especially when over campfires smouldering far into the night.