eat. She don't lay.
She'll need a good deal of b'ilin'. You can have all the wood you want
to pick up, but I don't want any cut. You mind that or there'll be
trouble."

"I won't cut a stick."

"Mind ye don't. Folks call me an easy mark, and I guess myself I am easy
up to a certain point, and cuttin' my wood is one of them points. Roof
didn't leak in that shower last night, did it?"

"Not a bit."

"Didn't s'pose it would. The other feller was handy, and he kept
tinkerin' all the time. Well, I'll be goin'; you can stay here and
welcome if you're careful about matches and don't cut my wood. Come over
for them hens any time you want to. I'll let my hired man drive you back
in the wagon."

"Much obliged," said David, with an inflection that was almost tearful.

"You're welcome," said the other, and ambled away.

The new David Anderson, the good old grandfather revived in his
unfortunate, perhaps graceless grandson, reseated himself on the
door-step and watched the bulky, receding figure of his visitor through
a pleasant blur of tears, which made the broad, rounded shoulders
and the halting columns of legs dance. This David Anderson had almost
forgotten that there was unpaid kindness in the whole world, and it
seemed to him as if he had seen angels walking up and down. He sat for a
while doing nothing except realizing happiness of the present and of
the future. He gazed at the green spread of forest boughs, and saw in
pleased anticipation their red and gold tints of autumn; also in pleased
anticipation their snowy and icy mail of winter, and himself, the
unmailed, defenseless human creature, housed and sheltered, sitting
before his own fire. This last happy outlook aroused him. If all this
was to be, he must be up and doing. He got up, entered the house, and
examined the broken umbrella which was his sole stock in trade. David
was a handy man. He at once knew that he was capable of putting it in
perfect repair. Strangely enough, for his sense of right and wrong was
not blunted, he had no compunction whatever in keeping this umbrella,
although he was reasonably certain that it belonged to one of the two
young girls who had been so terrified by him. He had a conviction that
this monstrous terror of theirs, which had hurt him more than many
apparently crueler things, made them quits.

After he had washed his dishes in the brook, and left them in the sun
to dry, he went to the village store and purchased a few simple t