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He sat a moment, thinking; then he rose, and began searching for tracks around the shanty. He found none, however, in the dead leaves which he could distinguish from those of Tunk and himself. "It must be from my father," said he, a thought that troubled him deeply, for it seemed to bring ill news that his father would never make himself known. "He must have seen me last night," Trove went on.

"But what do you mean about changing our quarters?" asked Jim, who looked upon their hut as something particularly convenient and well located. "I mean that we have got to build another shanty somewhere, if we can't find one ready-made." "Nonsense! there's no more use of our leaving this place than there is of our trying to fly!" said Dick.

"Maybe he's at the Fort," she said encouragingly. "We'll drive home quick. There's a lot of it down-hill." She clucked to the team. At that moment the door of a near-by shanty opened. A man came out, waving a letter. "Say! hello!" he bawled; "don't you want your mail?" Dallas checked the mules. "I got a letter for you," he went on. It was Al Braden of Sioux Falls.

The family moved to Indiana," he went on, "when Abe was about nine. Mr. Lincoln moved first, and built a camp of brush in Spencer County. We came a year later, and he had then a cabin. So he gave us the shanty. Abe killed a turkey the day we got there, and couldn't get through tellin' about it. The name was pronounced Linkhorn by the folks then. We was all uneducated.

Meantime busy hands have gathered boughs of the spruce and the feathery balsam, and shingled the ground underneath the shanty for a bed. It is an aromatic bed: in theory it is elastic and consoling. Upon it are spread the blankets. The sleepers, of all sexes and ages, are to lie there in a row, their feet to the fire, and their heads under the edge of the sloping roof.

We broomed and we scrubbed, we washed and we sluiced, we even tinkered and mended, we cleaned and we swore, and made our lives temporarily miserable; and yet, with all this, how grimy, and dirty, and mean, and wretched, that shanty of ours would continue to look! Never had our household property been subjected to such a cleaning up as that was.

They remark apologetically that it is blazing hot and there are plenty of trout ahead. Then they lean their rods against the shanty, and lounge on the blankets, and smoke and doze. It is less than forty-eight hours since the cross-pole was laid; and, using a little common sense woodcraft, the camp has already attained to a systematic no-system of rest, freedom and idleness.

Daddy's shanty was in her care, and of what night had she ever been afraid? "I air a goin' home," she answered almost sullenly; "ain't a dum bit afraid of nothin'." As Frederick turned to her side, Tess glanced up confusedly. "Ye can't walk with me through the streets of Ithacy," said she. "Why not?" "Cause well, cause ye can't, that's why!"

We plowed our way gallantly through the mud to a little shanty, at the door of which we were peremptorily commanded by the landlord to scrub ourselves, before we entered, with the stump of an old broom. This we did, producing on our nether persons the appearance of bread which has been carefully spread with treacle by an economic housekeeper.

Well, I s'pose ye haven't. Yer daddy's cleared out, bag and baggage. I don't s'pose he had to hire much of a team, either, to carry off what was left at the old place; but he took his pipe and a change of clothes; and I don't believe there is enough left in the shanty, to make it dangerous to leave the door open o' nights.