"Jacob, is this possible? So near, and yet to
us the distance has been as great as though it were a hundred miles or
more."
"I tell you what, boys, that is the provoking part of it. I remember when
I was out on the St. John's, lumbering, missing my comrades, and I was
well-nigh starving, when I chanced to come back to the spot where we
parted; and I verily believe I had not been two miles distant the whole
eight days that I was moving round and round, and backward and forward,
just in a circle, because, d'ye see, I followed the sun, and that led me
astray the whole time."
"Was that when you well-nigh roasted the bear?" asked Louis, with a sly
glance at Hector.
"Well, no; that was another time; your father was out with me then." And
old Jacob, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, settled himself to recount
the adventure of the bear. Hector, who had heard Louis's edition of the
roast bear, was almost impatient at being forced to listen to old Jacob's
long-winded history, which included about a dozen other stories, all tagged
on to this, like links of a lengthened chain; and was not sorry when the
old lumberer, taking his red nightcap out of his pocket, at last stretched
himself out on a buffalo skin that he had brought up from the canoe, and
soon was soundly sleeping.
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