"Toot! toot! t-o-ot!"

This was the third time the horn had been blown—first warningly, then persuasively, and at last angrily.

The hunters on the other side of the river, who had been trying for more than twenty minutes to bring the ferryman over to them, were beginning to get impatient. So was Joe Morgan, the ferryman's youngest son—a sturdy, sun-browned boy of fifteen, who stood in the flat, holding one of the heavy sweeps in his hand, all ready to shove off.

He looked toward the men on the opposite shore, and then he looked at his brother, who sat on the bank, with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his hands.

"There's eighty cents in that load," said Joe, who was in a great hurry to respond to the angry blasts of the horn. "If they get tired of waiting, and go down to the bridge, we shall be just that much out of pocket."

"Let 'em go, if they want to," replied the boy on the bank, in a lazy, indifferent tone. "There's no law to hinder 'em that I know of. Pap don't seem to be in no great hurry, and neither be I. I'm sick and tired of pulling that heavy flat over the river every time anybody takes a fool notion into his head to toot that horn. Some day I'll get mad and sink it so deep that it can't never be found again—I will so!"

"Now, Dan, what's the use of talking that way?" exclaimed Joe, impatiently. "You know well enough that as long as we run the ferry, we must hold ourselves in readiness to serve any one who may call upon us; and if you should destroy the flat, we would have to get another or give up the business."

"And that's just what I want to do," answered Dan.

"Then how would we make a living?"

"Easy enough. Can't we all shoot birds and rabbits when the season's open, and snare 'em when it's shut? And can't mother earn a dollar every day by washing for them rich—"

"Dan, I'm ashamed of you," interrupted Joe. "What mother wants is rest, and not more work. Come on; what's the use of being so lazy? You've got to make a start some time or other."

But Dan made no move, and Joe, who was very much disgusted with his brother's obstinacy, threw down the sweep, sprang ashore and ran up the bank toward the little board cabin that stood at the top.

Finding that the door would not open for him, Joe ran around the corner of the building, and looked in at a convenient window, just in time to catch his father in the act of thrusting a letter into his pocket. The ferryman's face was flushed, and his movements were nervous and hurried. The boy saw at a glance that he was greatly excited about something.

"As long as I have been acquainted with him, I never knew him to get a letter before," said Joe to himself. "He has heard some very good or some very bad news, for he is so upset that he doesn't seem to know what he is about."

"I heard 'em blowing, Joey," said Silas, without waiting for the boy to speak, "and now we'll go and bring 'em over. Thank goodness, I won't have to follow this mean business much longer. I don't like it, Joey. I wasn't born to wait on other folks, and I'm going to quit it."

"Then you will have to quit ferrying," said Joe, as he followed his father down the bank.

"That's just what I intend to do," answered Silas, and then the boy noticed that there was a triumphant smile on his face, and that he rubbed his hands together as if he were thinking about something that afforded him the greatest satisfaction. "I've got an idee into my head, and if I don't make the folks around here look wild some of these days, I'm a goat," added the ferryman.

And then he raised a yell to let the men on the other side of the river know that he had at last made up his mind to respond to their signals. But before he did so, he shaded his eyes with his hand, and took a good look at the group on the opposite bank, after which he walked around the cabin, snapping his fingers as he went. This was a signal to the dogs that it was time for them to retire from public gaze for a short season; in other words, to go into a miserable lean-to behind the cabin, which Silas called a wood-shed, and stay there until the hunters, who were now on the other side of the river, should have passed out of sight. They went in in obedience to a sign from the ferryman, and the latter closed the door and put a stick of cord-wood against it to hold it in place.

"If them setter brutes was a present to pap, like he says they was, it's mighty comical to me why he takes so much trouble to hide 'em every time some of them city shooters comes along and toot that horn," soliloquized Dan, as he slowly, almost painfully, arose from the ground, and, after much stretching and yawning, followed his father and brother down the bank toward the flat. "He says he's scared that somebody will take a notion to 'em and steal 'em; but that's all in my one eye, 'cording to my way of thinking. Now, I'll just tell him this for a fact. If he don't quit being so stingy with the money I help him earn with this ferry, I'll bust up the plans he's got into his head about them dogs—I will so. I wonder what's come over him all of a sudden? Here he's been clear up the mounting and come back with only an armful of wood on his wagon, and he don't generally whoop in that there good-natured way, less'n he's got something on his mind."

That was true enough. The ferryman's replies to the hails that came to him from over the river, usually sounded more like the complaints of a surly bear than anything else to which we can compare them. The tone in which they were uttered seemed to say, "I'll come because I can't help myself," and he was so long about it, and made himself so very disagreeable in the presence of his passengers, that those who knew him would often go ten miles out of their way to reach a bridge rather than put a dime into his pocket. But on this particular morning, his voice rang out so cheerily that it attracted Joe's attention as well as Dan's.

Silas was always good-natured when he had something besides his poverty to think about, and Joe would have known that his father had some new idea in his head, even if he had not said a word about it.

"Lively, Dannie!" exclaimed Silas, seizing the steering-oar and pushing the flat away from the bank. "Put in your very best licks, 'cause there won't none of us have to follow this miserable business much longer. There'll be a day when we won't have to go and come at everybody's beck and call, and that day ain't so very far away neither."

The two boys took their places at the sweeps, and the flat moved out into the river. Joe did his best to make a quick passage, as he always did, while the lazy Dan, who had the current in his favor, merely put his oar into the water and took it out again, without exerting himself in the least. His father's hopeful and encouraging words did not infuse a particle of energy into him. He had heard him talk that way too often.

"It ain't right that we should be so poor, while other folks, who never did a hand's turn in their lives, have got more than they know what to do with," continued Silas, as he dropped the steering-oar into the water. "I've got just as much right to have money, and the fine things that money'll buy, as anybody has, and I'm going to have 'em, too. I ain't going to live like the pigs in the gutter no longer. Just think of the hundreds and thousands of dollars that's spent down to the Beach every summer by the city chaps who come there to loaf! I can't lay around under the shade of the trees or swing in a hammock just 'cause the weather's hot. I've got to work. I've got to cut cord-wood in winter and run this ferry during the summer, in order to make a living; but other fellows can stay around and do nothing, just 'cause they've got money. I say again, that such things ain't right."

"It makes me savage every time I go down to the Beach," chimed in Dan, "when I see them city folks, who ain't a cent's worth better than I be, wearing their good clothes, and walking around with their fine guns and fish-poles on their shoulders—"

"Like them over there," said his father, nodding his head toward the bank, which was now but a short distance away.

Dan faced about on his seat, and took a good look at the party in question.

There were ninety cents in the load instead of eighty. There were three sportsmen in brown hunting-suits, who were walking restlessly about as if they did not know what to do with themselves, and they had a double team, with a negro to drive it.

With them were half a dozen setters and pointers, which were exercising their muscles by racing up and down the bank.

The sight of the negro set the ferryman's tongue in motion again, while the good clothes the strangers wore had about the same effect upon Dan that a piece of red cloth is supposed to have upon a pugnacious turkey gobbler.

"More 'ristocrats!" sneered Silas. "Why don't they drive their own team?"

"Probably they don't want to," replied Joe. "Besides, they are able to hire some one to drive it for them."

"Of course they are!" exclaimed Silas, who was angry in an instant. "But I ain't able to hire a nigger to run this ferry for me. I say that such a state of things ain't right."

"Well, it isn't their fault, is it?" said Joe.

"I didn't say it was," snapped his father. "It ain't my fault, neither, that I haven't got as much money as the richest of them, but it will be my fault if I don't have it before the season's over. They're going after woodcock," added Silas, who was a market-shooter as well as a ferryman and wood-cutter. "I would like to bet them something that they won't get enough birds to pay them for crossing the river. I've got all the covers pretty well cleaned out."

"Them's the sort of fellers I despise," said Dan, turning around on his seat and resuming his work at the sweep—or, rather, his pretence of it. "The money them dogs cost would keep me in the best kind of grub and clothes for a whole year. Just look at the clothes they've got on, and then cast your eye at these I've got on. Dog-gone such luck! I hope they won't get nothing, and if they should hire me for a guide, I would take good care to lead them where such a bird as a woodcock wasn't never seen."

"Perhaps they don't need a guide," said Joe. "Because they wear good clothes and own fine dogs, it is no sign that they don't know woodcock ground or a snipe bog when they see it, as well as you do. Perhaps they are all better hunters and wing-shots than you ever dare be."

"Not much they ain't," exclaimed Dan, who got fighting mad whenever his brother threw out a hint of this kind. "I can beat any feller who wears them kind of clothes; and as for them fine dogs of their'n, I'll take Bony and get more partridges in a day than they can shoot in a week."

"Well, then, why ain't you satisfied? What are you growling about?"

"'Cause they're 'ristocrats—that's what I'm growling about," answered Dan, looking savagely across the flat at his brother, while Silas nodded a silent but hearty approval. "I am getting tired of seeing so much style every day, while I am so poor that I can't hardly raise money enough to buy powder and shot, and some fine day I'll bust up some of these hunting parties. I've got just as much right to see fun as they have."

"So you have, Dannie," said his father. "There ain't no sense in the way things go in this world anyway, and I am glad to see you kick agin it. I have always told you, that I would be better off some day, and I have hit upon the very idee at last. Me and you will stick together, and I'll warrant that we will make more money than Joe does by toadying to these 'ristocrats who come here to take the bread out of our mouths, by shooting the game that rightfully belongs to us."

"I don't toady to anybody," replied Joe, with some spirit. "I am glad of the chances they give me to earn something now and then, and I am sure we need it bad enough."

"I have thought up a way to get more out of them than you do, and the first good chance I get I am going to try it on," observed Dan. "I won't go halvers with you, neither, and you needn't expect me to. You never give me a cent."

"Of course I don't. You are as able to make something for yourself as I am to make it for you. Mother gets all I earn."

By this time the flat was within a few lengths of the shore, and the crew were obliged to give their entire attention to the sweeps, in order to make a landing. The ferryman, who up to this time had been in a state of nervousness and expectancy, now began to act more like himself—that is to say, he greeted his passengers with an angry scowl, and gave them about as much polite attention as he would have bestowed upon so many bags of corn.

He had kept his gaze fastened upon them, and he was both relieved and disappointed to discover that the owner of the dogs that were shut up in his woodshed was not among them.

At the proper moment the "apron"—a movable gangway which could be raised and lowered at pleasure—was dropped upon the bank, and in five minutes more the team and the passengers were all aboard, and the flat was moving back across the river.