Pal at his heels, Dan bringing up the rear, he walked fast. In three minutes they came to a clearing. Apparently without plan, it had been hacked out of the forest. It was irregularly-shaped, probably to follow the easiest cutting, and a few large trees had been allowed to stand in it. There were many stumps, a small garden, a mule that hung its head over the topmost of two strands of rusting wire and looked cynical, and four half-wild pigs that squealed and scuttled into the brush. The barn, that had listed badly and seemed in immediate danger of falling, was propped up with saplings. The house, made of hand-hewn timbers, was very small and very old. Rains, snow, sun and wind had so beaten it that it had achieved a unique color all its own and somehow it looked sad. Jeff knocked confidently and waited. The door opened an inch, then another inch, and in the gloomy interior Jeff saw, not too well, a scowling face that was framed in a veritable haystack of black hair and beard. But he saw very clearly the sinister snout of a rifle that was aimed squarely at his middle and he heard very clearly a growled, "Git goin' an' start now!" "Right away," Jeff agreed. He whirled and started back to the main path. Too over-awed to speak, Dan trotted at his heels and he dared say nothing until they were once more where they had started from. Then, "Gee!" he breathed. "Weren't you scared?" "No," Jeff answered wryly, "my heart always pounds." "Do you think he didn't want us around?" "I had a slight suspicion." "What do we do now?" "Find somebody else," Jeff said cheerfully. "It's part of peddling." The day was too fine, and too sparkling, to be ruined by any surly mountaineer. They walked on, feet winged and hearts gay. Jeff thought whimsically that the money he made selling or trading was the very smallest part of the reward he received. By far the major portion lay in walks just like this, in the fact that he loved the work he was doing, and in trying to anticipate what lay ahead. He always tried to build up a mental picture of his next customer, always failed to do so, and invariably had to discard his carefully-rehearsed approach to create a new one on the spur of the moment. Much of the time he knew the sort of house in which his next prospect would live, but nothing in his experience had prepared him for the house they found not a mile from the one they had left. Rounding a bend, they saw a little hill. There was nothing majestic or imposing about it, for it was a very small hill. But it was a very beautiful one. It was as though the Creator of the mountains, after much deliberation, had decided that the little hill would fit nowhere except exactly where it was.