Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/79

 “and he is much younger than I, not a great deal older than you, I should think. You are not quite a grown man yet, and he has only just  ceased being a boy. That is all the difference.”

She put the last thing into his pack and helped him to pull the straps tight.

“We are ready now,” she said, “and I know you would like to go at once, but it is not wise. It is a long day’s journey even to Two Rivers, and if you set out now you could not reach there until  hours after midnight. So you had better start at daylight to-morrow.”

It was before dawn next day when she knocked softly at his door. When he had slipped downstairs and had a hasty breakfast in the kitchen, she went out upon the steps with him and gave  him the most explicit directions as to how he was  to go. She had never been so far as Jasper Peak or the end of the lake where her brother lived, but she could tell him, almost mile by mile, the  way to the Indian encampment where the Chippewa boy, Shokatan, could put him on the next  stage of his journey.