Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/81

Rh outer gate. He and his ways were well known in all this region,—everybody stared to see him coming to camp-meeting.

"Hollo, John! Ez this you?" exclaimed one.

"What 's up?" said another.

"Glad to see you in the right way at last, John," called out a gray-haired elder of the Methodist church in Deerway.

John did not like this. At first he made no reply, except a good-natured laugh; but presently, to a townsman who shouted out, across many heads,—

"Why, John Bassett, what on airth 's brought you here, I 'd like to know," he answered in an equally loud tone,— "Not any of the tomfoolery that 's brought you, I can tell you that. I 'm looking after Hi Peet to shoe my horse, back here at the Crossing."

"Oh, Hi? Well, he 's in there, in the seats, along o' his folks. But you won't get him to come out till after the sermon. The bishop 's jest beginnin' now."

John walked on in silence. The scene was beginning to take a vivid hold on his imagination. From his earliest boyhood he had had a passionate love of the woods. There was not a wood within five miles of his father's house which he did not know as thoroughly as if he had been an Indian or a trapper. The young trees had grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength; he