"Can you ride?"
"Oh yes," I cried, as I recalled the days when I had about as wild a
little Welsh pony as ever boy sat.
"Come, that's something; but you can't ride without a horse."
"No, sir."
"And have you any capital to buy land, and stock it?"
"Only a few pounds left, sir."
"Oh, you have a few pounds. Well, yours seems a lively position, and I
suppose you both see that you have very little chance of getting on."
"Oh, I don't know, sir," said Esau. "We've seen lots of places where we
could build a hut to begin with, and get on by degrees."
"Your eyes want opening a little wider, my lad. Suppose you took up one
of the beautiful patches of land you saw near the river."
"Yes, sir, quite close, where we could catch salmon same as the Indians
do, and dry them. I don't see if the Indians can live why we couldn't."
"For the simple reason that you are not Indians--savages, my lad. Do
you know that if you did as you propose, some night you would have to
climb for your life, and cling in the branches of a huge pine, while the
flooded river swept away your hut."
"Don't sweep away your huts," said Esau, sulkily.
"Because they are two hundred feet above the river. Well, what are you
going to do?"
"Start back again, sir, at once," I replied.
"And then?"
"Try to get work somewhere."
"And what am I to say to my sister and her husband when they come?"
"That we found out we had made a mistake, sir, and had set to work at
once to try and remedy it."
"You will sleep here to-night though, of course?"