"Oh, that was way up in the northern part, in the Big Woods. I've had some narrow escapes."
Then Morton, who had never been west of Pittsburg, sang somewhat in this wise the epic of the hunting he had never done:
Alone. Among the pines. Dead o' winter. Only one shell in his rifle. Cold of winter. Snow-deep snow. Snow-shoes. Hiking along-reg'lar mushing-packing grub to the lumber-camp. Way up near the Canadian border. Cold, terrible cold. Stars looked like little bits of steel.
Mr. Wrenn thought he remembered the story. He had read it in a magazine. Morton was continuing:
Snow stretched out among the pines. He was wearing a Mackinaw and shoe-packs. Saw a bear loping along. He had-Morton had-a .44-.40 Marlin, but only one shell. Thrust the muzzle of his rifle right into the bear's mouth. Scared for a minute. Almost fell off his snow-shoes. Hardest thing he ever did, to pull that trigger. Fired. Bear sort of jumped at him, then rolled over, clawing. Great place, those Minnesota Big-
"What's a shoe-pack?" the Englishman stolidly interjected.
"Kind of a moccasin.... Great place, those woods. Hope your brother gets the chance to get up there."
"I say, I wonder did you ever meet him? Scrabble is his name, Jock Scrabble."
"Jock Scrabble-no, but say! By golly, there was a fellow up in the Big Woods that came from St. Cl-St. Cloud? Yes, that was it. He was telling us about the town. I remember he said your brother had great chances there."
The Englishman meditatively accepted a bad cigar from Mr. Wrenn. Suddenly: "You chaps can sleep in the stable-loft if you'd like. But you must blooming well stop smoking."
So in the dark odorous hay-mow Mr. Wrenn stretched out his legs with an affectionate "good night" to Morton. He slept nine hours. When he awoke, at the sound of a chain clanking in the stable below, Morton was gone. This note was pinned to his sleeve:
DEAR OLD MAN,-I still feel sure that you will not enjoy the hiking. Bumming is not much fun for most people, I don't think, even if they say it is. I do not want to live on you. I always did hate to graft on people. So I am going to beat it off alone. But I hope I will see you in N Y we will enjoy many a good laugh together over our trip. If you will phone the P. R. R. you can find out when I get back so on. As I do not know what your address will be. Please look me up I hope you will have a good trip.
Yours truly,
HARRY P. MORTON.
Mr. Wrenn lay listening to the unfriendly rattling of the chain harness below for a long time. When he crawled languidly down from the hay-loft he glowered in a manner which was decidedly surly even for Bill Wrenn at a middle-aged English stranger who was stooping over a cow's hoof in a stall facing the ladder.
"Wot you doing here?" asked the Englishman, raising his head and regarding Mr. Wrenn as a housewife does a cockroach in the salad-bowl.
Mr. Wrenn was bored. This seemed a very poor sort of man; a bloated Cockney, with a dirty neck-cloth, vile cuffs of grayish black, and a waistcoat cut foolishly high.
"The owner said I could sleep here," he snapped.
"Ow. 'E did, did 'e? 'E ayn't been giving you any of the perishin' 'osses, too, 'as 'e?"
It was sturdy old Bill Wrenn who snarled, "Oh, shut up!" Bill didn't feel like standing much just then. He'd punch this fellow as he'd punched Pete, as soon as not-or even sooner.
"Ow.... It's shut up, is it?... I've 'arf a mind to set the 'tecs on you, but I'm lyte. I'll just 'it you on the bloody nowse."
Bill Wrenn stepped off the ladder and squared at him. He was sorry that the Cockney was smaller than Pete.
The Cockney came over, feinted in an absent-minded manner, made swift and confusing circles with his left hand, and hit Bill Wrenn on the aforesaid bloody nose, which immediately became a bleeding nose. Bill Wrenn felt dizzy and, sitting on a grain-sack, listened amazedly to the Cockney's apologetic:
"I'm sorry I ayn't got time to 'ave the law on you, but I could spare time to 'it you again."
Bill shook the blood from his nose and staggered at the Cockney, who seized his collar, set him down outside the stable with a jarring bump, and walked away, whistling:
"Come, oh come to our Sunday-school,
Ev-v-v-v-v-v-ry Sunday morn-ing."
"Gee!" mourned Mr. William Wrenn, "and I thought I was getting this hobo business down pat.... Gee! I wonder if Pete was so hard to lick?"
CHAPTER VI. HE IS AN ORPHAN
Sadly clinging to the plan of the walking-trip he was to have made with Morton, Mr. Wrenn crossed by ferry to Birkenhead, quite unhappily, for he wanted to be discussing with Morton the quaintness of the uniformed functionaries. He looked for the Merian half the way over. As he walked through Birkenhead, bound for Chester, he pricked himself on to note red-brick house-rows, almost shocking in their lack of high front stoops. Along the country road he reflected: "Wouldn't Morty enjoy this! Farm-yard all paved. Haystack with a little roof on it. Kitchen stove stuck in a kind of fireplace. Foreign as the deuce."
But Morton was off some place, in a darkness where there weren't things to enjoy. Mr. Wrenn had lost him forever. Once he heard himself wishing that even Tim, the hatter, or "good old McGarver" were along. A scene so British that it seemed proper to enjoy it alone he did find in a real garden-party, with what appeared to be a real curate, out of a story in The Strand, passing teacups; but he passed out of that hot glow into a cold plodding that led him to Chester and a dull hotel which might as well have been in Bridgeport or Hoboken.
He somewhat timidly enjoyed Chester the early part of the next day, docilely following a guide about the walls, gaping at the mill on the Dee and asking the guide two intelligent questions about Roman remains. He snooped through the galleried streets, peering up dark stairways set in heavy masonry that spoke of historic sieges, and imagined that he was historically besieging. For a time Mr. Wrenn's fancies contented him.
He smiled as he addressed glossy red and green postcards to Lee Theresa and Goaty, Cousin John and Mr. Guilfogle, writing on each a variation of "Having a splendid trip. This is a very interesting old town. Wish you were here." Pantingly, he found a panorama showing the hotel where he was staying-or at least two of its chimneys-and, marking it with a heavy cross and the announcement "This is my hotel where I am staying," he sent it to Charley Carpenter.
He was at his nearest to greatness at Chester Cathedral. He chuckled aloud as he passed the remains of a refectory of monastic days, in the close, where knights had tied their romantically pawing chargers, "just like he'd read about in a story about the olden times." He was really there. He glanced about and assured himself of it. He wasn't in the office. He was in an English cathedral close!
But shortly thereafter he was in an English temperance hotel, sitting still, almost weeping with the longing to see Morton. He walked abroad, feeling like an intruder on the lively night crowd; in a tap-room he drank a glass of English porter and tried to make himself believe that he was acquainted with the others in the room, to which theory they gave but little support. All this while his loneliness shadowed him.
Of that loneliness one could make many books; how it sat down with him; how he crouched in his chair, be-spelled by it, till he violently rose and fled, with loneliness for companion in his flight. He was lonely. He sighed that he was "lonely as fits." Lonely-the word obsessed him. Doubtless he was a bit mad, as are all the isolated men who sit in distant lands longing for the voices of friendship.
Next morning he hastened to take the train for Oxford to get away from his loneliness, which lolled evilly beside him in the compartment. He tried to convey to a stodgy North Countryman his interest in the way the seats faced each other. The man said "Oh aye?" insultingly and returned to his Manchester newspaper.