Page:Hugh Pendexter--The young timber-cruisers.djvu/205

 ate nothing but pertaters, and pertaters was then selling fer fifty cents a bushel. What d’ye think of that fer a swindle? I went to the feller behind the desk and told him I wanted enough pertaters to make up a bushel’n a half, seeing as how I’d paid seventy-five cents, and he only laffed at me. No circuses or hotels git any more of my money.”

Bub chuckled at Abner’s inability to abandon the very subject that tortured him to think of. Stanley, less mercurial than the other, remained silent, his thoughts running along the dramatic events of the last few hours. As silence fell on the trio each began to read the story told by the night sounds. To Stanley the chorus was more beautiful than ever, while the wilder and more unwholesome notes failed to incite the old fear. He passed over the shriek of the great horned owl with a frown, as he would try to ignore a discord in an otherwise sweet melody.

To Abner and Bub the night songs and voices were of practical worth. The lynx had missed his prey and was screaming in rage. The porcupine, fearless beneath his panoply of spears, was one of the few wood folks who did not bother to practice secrecy, and the sprawling step and crackling limbs emanated from his nocturnal prowlings and did not evidence the