"Aren't you going to try to get work, Uncle Si?" asked the boy anxiously, as he gazed at the large and powerful-looking frame of the man before him. "To be sure I'm a-goin' to go to work--soon as I'm fit. But I can't do nuthin with my feet an' my stomach goin' back on me, can I?" "I thought your dyspepsia was about over--you've eaten so well the past week. And you've walked considerably lately. If you got something easy----" "Now, don't you go to tellin' me what to do!" cried the old man, wrathfully. "I'm a sick man, that's what I am. I ain't able to work, an' it's up to you as a dootiful nevvy to git work an' support us both. Now you jest trot off to the Storburgh camp, an' don't you come home till you git work. An' after this, you better give up havin' anything to do with thet good-fer-nuthin, lazy Chet Greene." The boy's eyes flashed for an instant and he was on the point of making a bitter reply to his relative. But then his mouth closed suddenly and he turned away. In silence he drew off his slippers, donned his big boots, and put on his overcoat and his winter cap. Then he pulled on his gloves, slung a game bag over his shoulder, and reached for a gun that stood behind a door. "Wot you takin' thet fer?" demanded Josiah Graham, with his eyes on the gun. "Didn't I tell you to look fer a job?" "That's what I'm going to do," was the reply. "But if I come across any game on the way I want the chance to bring it down." "Humph! I know how boys are! Rather loaf around the woods than work, any time." "Uncle Si, if you say another word----" began the youth, and then he stopped short, turned on his heel, and walked from the cabin, closing the door none too gently behind him. It was certainly a trying situation, and as he stepped out into the snow Andy felt as if he never wanted to go back and never wanted to see his Uncle Si again. "It's his laziness, nothing else," murmured the boy to himself, as he trudged off. "He's as able to work as I am. He always was lazy--father said so. Oh, dear; I wish he had never come to Pine Run!" Andy was a youth of seventeen, of medium height, but with well-developed chest and muscles. His face was a round one, and usually good to look at, although at present it was drawn down because of what had just occurred. The boy was an orphan, the son of a man who in years gone by had bought and sold lumber throughout the northern section of Maine. His mother had been taken away when he was a small lad, and then he and his father had left town and come to live in the big cabin from which Andy was now trudging so rapidly. An old colored woman had come along, to do the cooking and other household work.