Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 139: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

FLOOD. the old books over and Jaid them, open, in the red and consuming heart of it. “ We'll take no more chances with them,” he said CHAPTER XVII. THE PEDDLER. ILAS KESTER kept an eye to wind- S ward for a few years, then forgot all about Pete Woodhall. The years passed in peace and plenty and honor. Archie McKim spent more and more of every day beside the kitchen stove, and rubbed his joints more and more, and at last made himself a pair of crutches. Gabe Loon waxed fat and talkative in the big kitchen, and with the tales he told of himself and his great friend, Paul Snider, he added to his reputation for wisdom and courage; and one morning he was found dead in his bed with a contented smile on his small brown face. Joe Newsam came gradually to the oc- cupation of Archie’s place as farm foreman and Silas’s right hand man. He married; and Silas built a new house for him near the smithy. jacob Kester went down river to school, and later to college, but all his vacations were spent at or about Lob’s Point, where his heart was. When his last examina- tion paper was written, he came home for He was a tall, quiet youth, gray-eyed, gentle and a thorough sportsman. All the traditions of the honest and fearless Kesters were his, and a taste in reading that was even finer than Silas’s own, and a love for the old house and the wide intervales and the crowded islands. One evening in April, fourteen years and some months after the violent theft of Gabe Loon’s wallet by Pete Woodhall away up on Gunflint Creek, a bewhiskered stran- ger carrying a peddler’s pack arrivedat Than Lunt’s house at the upper edge of French Village. Supper was on the table when Than opened the door to him, so of course he was invited to ‘set in ” to the repast of fried salt pork and boiled potatoes. dried- 2A 769 apple pie, sugar cookies, strawberry pre- serves and strong tea. He said his name was Baker, that he had come a long way since breakfast, that the roads and trade were bad: These state- ments, and a few questions concerning the village and neighborhood, were the sum of his conversation. He wasn’t much of a talker, but he was a good listener. The old couple, Than and Eliza Lunt, were tireless chatterers. They told the peddler all the news and gossip of the countryside, grave and gay, commendable and scandalous. He listened with a grave face, but now and then a brightening or dulling of his dark eyes, to tales of village trickery, of salmon poaching, of domestic virtues and errors, or rural comedy and tragedy, of fights and frolics and vanity and charity, of the pride of the Ingoldsbys and the shame of the half-breed Rassers, of the worth and generosity of the Kesters, of the beauty of Squire Ingoldsby’s daughter who had been to school in England, and of the strength and learning of Silas Kester’s son who had been down river to college. “ There’ll be a weddin’ some day,” said the old lady. ‘“‘ Gentry the both of ’*em— as good as you’d find anywheres. An’ that will surely be great property—Lob’s P’int and Overisland j’ined together! They be great folks, them Ingoldsbys and Kesters, and proud—but they don’t show their pride to poor folk like us. They ain’t like the new run of upstarts from the city. If you was to go to Silas Kester’s house this minute, Mr. Baker, ye’d be treated with the best.” The peddler said nothing to that, but his bearded lips twisted slightly and his dark eyes brightened and then dulled like stone. The peddler gave the old couple several articles from his pack. They made up a bed for him in the kitchen, with a soft mat- tress and soft blankets and fine sheets. But he lay awake a long time, prodded by a devil of envy and hatred and malice and embittered vanity and poisoned self-pity and all uncharitableness. As he lay awake he heard the river crack the rotten ice again and again with reports like guns, and later, just before he fell LI com () DOOkKSEeO