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"Then you will have to quit ferrying," said Joe, as he followed his father down the bank.

"That's just what I intend to do," answered Silas, and then the boy noticed that there was a triumphant smile on his face, and that he rubbed his hands together as if he were thinking about something that afforded him the greatest satisfaction. "I've got an idee into my head, and if I don't make the folks around here look wild some of these days, I'm a goat," added the ferryman.

And then he raised a yell to let the men on the other side of the river know that he had at last made up his mind to respond to their signals. But before he did so, he shaded his eyes with his hand, and took a good look at the group on the opposite bank, after which he walked around the cabin, snapping his fingers as he went. This was a signal to the dogs that it was time for them to retire from public gaze for a short season; in other words, to go into a miserable lean-to behind the cabin, which Silas called a wood-shed, and stay there until the hunters, who were now on the other side of the river, should have passed out of sight. They went in in obedience to a sign from the ferryman, and the latter closed the door and put a stick of cord-wood against it to hold it in place.