For weeks after the Lost Farm folk returned from the hunting that had ended so disastrously, Beelzebub wandered about the camp and the stable, poking his broad, sleek fighting-face into odd corners, and mewing plaintively as each nook disclosed an emptiness that he could not understand. Finally, he gave up looking for his vanished friend. When the snow came he resumed his old place beside the kitchen stove, philosophically dozing away the long winter days in luxurious content.

One December afternoon, as Avery sat weaving the mesh of a snowshoe, Beelzebub stretched himself, yawned, and sidled over to the old man. He crouched and sprang to his lap, rubbing a black nose ingratiatingly against his sleeve.

“Wal, Beelzebub, what’s ailin’ you now? Lonesome with jest me here? Wal, Dave and Swickey’s comin’ back afore long.” He glanced at the clock. “Int’rested in this here snowshoe? No. Don’t like the smell of it, hey? What be you askin’ fur? Smoke? Wal, Smoke’s gone huntin’—up a long trail where huntin’ ’s easy and they’s lots of it. Now I reckon you better hop down ag’in so ’s I kin finish this here job. Thar!”

The big cat rubbed sinuously against a table leg, circled the room, and crouched beside the stove again.

“Wouldn’t mind bein’ a cat myself,” soliloquized Avery. “Nothin’ to do but eat and sleep and feel plumb sat’sfied with everything. ’Specially a he cat what ain’t got no young ones to raise and nuss. But it’s diff’runt with me. Now, there’s my Swickey—but what’s the good of talkin’! Young folks is goin’ to do jest the same as their pas and mas done, if they don’t do no wuss.”

The old man bent busily over the racquette, which was nearly completed. Finally, he tossed it to the floor and stood up, pushing back his spectacles and yawning sonorously.

“Wal, it do beat the old scortch how things keeps a-proddin’ a man to keep him movin’. A’ter suthin’ happens and he ain’t got nuthin’ to do but jest live and wait fur—wal, gits settled kind of easy and comf’table a’ter one shakin’ up, long comes suthin’ unexpected-like and says, ‘Here, you’re takin’ it too all-fired easy’; and then, like enough, he gits over thet, and gits settled ag’in, and afore he’s got his feet on the stove and his pipe lit, long comes, wal, mebby a railrud and runs slam-bang through a feller’s barn. Now, he’s either got to hire a man to open and shet the doors every time a train comes rippety-clickin’ through or sell out and move on like a Injun. And if the hired man happened to fergit to open the door—suthin’ ’ud git busted, so I reckon we’ll sell out and move over to Timberland, hey, Beelzebub?”

“Yas,” he continued, moving to the window, “young folks likes new things and ole folks likes ole things and both on ’em likes to live as long as they kin, even if they be some one over yonder, back of them clouds up thar on the mountain, callin’ and callin’ like as if they’d been expectin’ a feller fur a long time. Wal, I reckon it ain’t a-goin’ to be a long time afore Swickey comes blushin’ up to her Pop and says she’s a-goin’ away fur a spell—with Dave. Things are pintin’ thet way, howcome they ain’t said nothin’ yit. Shucks! but I be gettin’ as fussy as a hen sca’d offen eggs. God-A’mighty never set out to make a better man than Dave, or a healthier gal than my Swickey, and come so clus to finishin’ the job. ’Course, Dave come from the city—thet’s the only thing ag’in’ him marryin’ my gal, fur she ain’t never goin’ to be like them city kind; howcome he says he ain’t a-goin’ back ag’in to stay, and he never bruk his word yit. Wal, they’ll git married and raise half a dozen strappin’ fine young ones, like as not, and they’s things wuss than thet happenin’ every day. Reckon I ought to be as happy as a pockapine in a bar’l of apples, but I ain’t. Feel like as if I was losin’ suthin’ I was never goin’ to git back ag’in.

“Used to calc’late if I had a lot of money, they’d be nothin’ to fuss about. Now I got money and more a-comin’ in and it’s jest good for buyin’ vittles and buildin’ houses and sech, and gettin’ things ready to be comf’table in, but thar’s jest where it lays back and folds its hands and says, ‘Now go ahead and be comf’table’—and thet’s diff’runt.”

The big iron kettle on the stove simmered contentedly. Avery rammed a stick of wood into the fire and poked the door shut with another. The short winter afternoon crept into the sombre cavern of the forest, and each pallid star took on a keener edge as twilight swiftly lost itself in the dusk of a December night. Over the silence came the sound of voices—a laugh—and Avery was at the door.

“Here they be, Beelzebub!” he exclaimed, “racin’ fur the camp like a couple of young ones thet’s killed a snake.”

“That’s not fair!” cried Swickey, as she stumbled, and David passed her, a cloud of silvery dust swirling up from his snowshoes.

He turned back, laughing, and helped her from the drift. “Now, we’ll start again. Are you ready—one—two—three!”

He allowed her a generous start and she beat him to the doorway.

“Hello, Pop!” she panted, as she stooped to unlace the snowshoes. “My! but that was fun. We raced from the edge of the woods all the way up here, and I beat Dave.”

“Yes, she got ahead of me,” said David, as with a lift of his foot and a twist of his ankle he freed himself from his snowshoes.

“You must teach me that hitch, Dave. I always have to unfasten mine.”

“That’s the Micmac hitch. My old guide Tommy showed me that,” replied David, picking up the racquettes and entering the house with Swickey.

“What was you racin’ fur?—Supper?” queried Avery, winking at David.

Swickey glanced at David and laughed. “He will tell you, Pop. He lost.”

“I think the winner should treat, don’t you, Avery?”

“Sure certain!”

“All right,” said Swickey, unbuttoning her coat and tossing it to a chair. She ran to her father and kissed him.

“Huh! You didn’t race goin’ to Jim’s, did you?” said the old man, holding her at arm’s length and admiring her deepening color. Her eyes brimmed with mischief.

“If you will let me go, I’ll tell,” she replied, assuming a childish seriousness that made him laugh. She slipped from him and ran to her room. In the doorway she turned and, putting her finger on her lips, cast an absurdly penitential glance toward the floor. “Yes, we did race going down, and Dave won.”

“Did the winner treat—?” began Avery.

“Mrs. Cameron was home,” replied Swickey evasively. “Jim had gone to Tramworth. The sheriff sent for him. But I’m going to change my stockings. Ask Dave.” And she closed the door.

“Jest like ole times—Swickey cuttin’ up and actin’ like the leetle Swickey ag’in.”

“Better than that,” said David absent-mindedly. Then, aware of Avery’s twinkling eye, he added, “That is—Swickey—you know Smoke—she felt badly—”

“Ya-a-s,” drawled Avery. “I reckon I know, and I’m pow’ful glad things is as they be.”

After supper Swickey lay stretched lazily on a camp-blanket near the stove, with Beelzebub purring a satisfied monotone as he lay curled in the hollow of her arm. Avery questioned David as to Cameron’s absence from home.

“I don’t know,” replied David. “Mrs. Cameron said the sheriff sent for him. Must be something important or he would have come up to see Jim himself.”

“Thet Curious Jim’s a queer cuss, always interestin’ hisself in other folkses business—howcome they ain’t nothin’ mean about Jim.”

“Maybe it’s about Fisty Harrigan,” said Swickey. “Mrs. Cameron said Fisty had been laying around Tramworth, drinking and making threats against—Dave.” She glanced up at him, and he smiled reassuringly. “And Jim knows more about—that time—than any one else.”

“Mrs. Cameron didn’t favor me with her confidence,” said David, as Avery’s eyes questioned him.

“Oh, well, you’re only a man,” said Swickey. “We talked about lots of things.”

“Didn’t talk about racin’ on snowshoes with Dave, did you?”

“Now, Pop, that’s mean—after my telling you—before supper—”

Avery laughed in huge good-humor.

Swickey’s head nodded and drooped to her arm. Beelzebub, disturbed, stood up and arched his back, yawned, sat on his tail and, stretching his sleek neck, licked her chin with a quick dab of his little red tongue.

“Now—Dave—” murmured Swickey sleepily.

In the Homeric roar of laughter that made the cat jump over her and flatten himself beneath the stove, she wakened, gazed about her, and finally got up with considerable dignity and marched to her bedroom.