The Corner House Girls Snowbound Part 20

"Aye, that can pay the price can have the luxuries. 'Tis so. But luxuries we knew naught about where I was born and bred."

"I suppose the people right around us here--the residents of this neighborhood--have few luxuries," Ruth said thoughtfully.

"There aren't many neighbors, I guess," said Neale, laughing.

"But those people living in that fis.h.i.+ng village--and even at c.o.xford--never saw a tenth of the things which we consider necessary at home," Ruth pursued.

"Suppose!" exclaimed Cecile eagerly. "Just suppose we were snowed in up here and could not get out for weeks, and n.o.body could get to us. I guess we would have to learn to go without luxuries! Maybe without food."

"Oh, don't suggest such a thing," begged Agnes. "And this cold air gives one such an appet.i.te!"

"Don't mention a shortage of food," put in Neale, chuckling, "or Aggie will be getting up in the night and coming down to rob the pantry."

There might have been a squabble right then and there had not Hedden appeared, and, in his grave way, announced:

"Mr. M'Graw has arrived, sir. Shall I bring him in here?"

"Ah!" exclaimed the lawyer, waking up from a brown study. "Ike M'Graw?

I understood from Birdsall that he is a character. Has he had supper, Hedden?"

"Yes, sir. I knew that you would wish him served. He has been eating in the servants' dining-room, sir."

"Send him in," the lawyer said. "Now, young folks, here is the man who can tell us more about Red Deer Lodge and the country hereabout, and all that goes on in it, than anybody else. Here--"

The door opened again. Hedden announced gravely:

"Mr. Ike M'Graw, sir."

There strode over the threshold one of the tallest men the young people, at least, had ever seen. And he was so lean that his height seemed more than it really was.

"Why," gasped Neale to Agnes, "he's so thin he doesn't cast a shadow, I bet!"

"s.h.!.+" advised the girl warningly.

They were all vastly interested in the appearance of Mr. Ike M'Graw.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TIMBER CRUISER

Mr. Howbridge got up from his chair and advanced to meet the backwoodsman with hospitable hand. The roughly dressed, bewhiskered forester did not impress the young folks at first as being different from the men who had driven the sledges to the camp or those who had brought the party up Long Lake in the ice-boats.

Ike M'Graw had an enormous moustache ("like that of a walrus," Cecile whispered), but his iron-gray beard was cropped close. His face was long and solemn of expression, but his gray eyes, surrounded by innumerable wrinkles, had a humorous cast, and were as bright as the eyes of a much younger person.

He seized Mr. Howbridge's hand and pumped it warmly. His grip was strong, and Mr. Howbridge winced, but he continued to smile upon the old man.

"Mr. Birdsall told me that if I wanted to know anything up here, or wanted anything done, to look to you, Mr. M'Graw," said the lawyer, as their hands fell apart.

"I bet he didn't say it jest that way, Mr. Howbridge," chuckled the man. "No. I reckon he jest called me 'Ike.' Now, didn't he? And 'Old Ike,' at that!"

Mr. Howbridge laughed. "Well, he did speak of you in that way, yes,"

he admitted.

"I reckoned so," M'Graw said. "Yep, I'm 'Old Ike' to my friends, and what my enemies call me don't matter at all--not at all."

"I fancy you don't make many enemies up here in the woods, M'Graw,"

said Mr. Howbridge, waving the visitor to a comfortable seat before the fire.

"Nor friends, nuther," chuckled the man. "No, sir, there ain't sech a slather of folks up here to mix in with, by any count."

Before the woodsman took his seat the lawyer introduced him to Mrs.

MacCall and to Ruth, individually, and to the rest of the group in general.

"Hi gorry!" exclaimed Ike M'Graw, "you've got a right big fam'ly, haven't you? You won't be lonesome up here--no, you won't be lonesome."

"And that is what I should think you would be," Mr. Howbridge said.

"Lonesome. If you get snowed in you don't see anybody for weeks, I suppose?"

"Better say 'months,' Mister," declared M'Graw. "I've been snowed into my cabin back yonder in the valley from the day before Christmas till come St. Patrick's Day. That's right."

"I understood you lived near the Lodge, here, Ike?" said the lawyer.

"Oh, I do in winter, since Mr. Birdsall asked me to," the man said.

"But sometimes--'specially when there was visitors up here--the population of this here ridge got too thick for Old Ike. Then I'd hike out for my old cabin in the valley."

Quickly Mr. Howbridge put in a query that had formed in his mind early in the evening:

"Have you been troubled with visitors up here this winter?"

"No, sir! It's been right quiet here, you might say."

"n.o.body here at all until my party came yesterday?"

"Well, not many. Some timbermen went through for Neven. His company's got a camp over beyond the Birdsall line. Yes, sir."

"Strangers have not been here, then?"

"Why, no. Not to my knowledge," said M'Graw, with a keener look at the lawyer. "You wasn't meanin' nothin' special, was you? I've been away over to Ebettsville for a week. Nothin' stirring here before I went."

The conversation had become general again among the main party. Mr.

Howbridge drew his chair nearer to the old man's ear.

"Listen," he said. "When my men came up yesterday and opened the house with the key I had given them, they found somebody had been in here not many hours before they arrived."