As he sat down, the off wheeler of the team, which had been drawn up a short distance from the fire, dropped on his paunch with a great rattling of chain and began placidly chewing his cud. Following his example, an ox in the middle of the string got down on his knees and began chewing. At the same moment the lamb, which had fallen out of bed and found his way out of the shack, announced himself with a bleat and went toddling off toward the darkness. Janet jumped up at once and went after him. Having captured him, she brought him back and stowed him comfortably in her lap, drawing the edge of her skirt up over him. "I suppose you've noticed, Miss Janet," he remarked, as he again turned his attention to the jug, "that the animals out in these parts don't know very much. They make people lots of trouble." "Oh, I don't mind the trouble at all. You see, I saved this one's life myself; that's why I am so interested in caring for him. He 's an orphan." "So I see. There's liable to be plenty of them. Are you partial to orphans?" "I could hardly help caring for him. Of course one naturally is." Jonas again turned his attention to the jug, removing the cork and placing it upside down on the ground. Janet held a saucer to receive her share. The molasses was slow about making its appearance. "This Golden Drip is a little late about coming. It's as stubborn as old Doc Wharton used to be." "Was he stubborn?" Janet asked, keeping the saucer level. "He wasn't much of anything else. He was so stubborn that when he drowned in the Comanche he floated upstream." "Really?" "Wasn't any doubt about it. Some people said that his foot must 'a' been caught in the stirrup and the horse dragged him up that far from where he went in. But I always claimed it was just natural." As the molasses had not yet responded, he up-ended the jug still farther and waited for results. "I suppose," he queried, "that Steve has told you about things down home. And all about his mother?" "He told me that he lost his mother last winter." "Ye-e-e-es," he said reflectively, drawing the word out as a thick sluggish stream began to pile up in the saucer. When she exclaimed "enough," he lowered the bottom of the jug and kept the mouth over the saucer as the molasses continued to run from it. "You can't stop that stuff by saying _Wo_," he remarked, whirling the jug in his hands to stop the flow from the lip. "It is n't as thick, though, as some that I 've seen." "No!" "I don't suppose Steve told you about the molasses I had with the 'J. K.' outfit one winter." "No, he did n't tell me anything about it." "Well, that molasses was so thick that when you got too much on a flapjack, all you had to do was to give the jug a few turns and wind the molasses right up into it again. You could wrap it around the neck of the jug till next time if you wanted to. If you 'll just excuse me a moment, Miss Janet, I 'll put this jug back in home, sweet home, again."