him. "Now what do you suppose he has sent you?" she inquired
eagerly, her hand straying toward the packages.

Jimmy tested the box. "It don't weigh much," he said, "but one end of
it's the heaviest."

He set the hatchet in a tiny crack, and with one rip, stripped off the
cover. Inside lay a long, brown leather case, with small buckles, and
in one end a little leather case, flat on one side, rounding on the
other, and it, too, fastened with a buckle. Jimmy caught sight of a
paper book folded in the bottom of the box, as he lifted the case. With
trembling fingers he unfastened the buckles, the whole thing unrolled,
and disclosed a case of leather, sewn in four divisions, from top to
bottom, and from the largest of these protruded a shining object. Jimmy
caught this, and began to draw, and the shine began to lengthen.

"Just what I thought!" exclaimed Dannie. "He's sent ye a fine cane."

"A hint to kape out of the small of his back the nixt time he goes
promenadin' on a cow-kitcher! The divil!" exploded Jimmy.

His quick eyes had caught a word on the cover of the little book in the
bottom of the box.

"A cane! A cane! Look at that, will ye?" He flashed six inches of
grooved silvery handle before their faces, and three feet of shining
black steel, scarcely thicker than a lead pencil. "Cane!" he cried
scornfully. Then he picked up the box, and opening it drew out a little
machine that shone like a silver watch, and setting it against the
handle, slipped a small slide over each end, and it held firmly, and
shone bravely.

"Oh, Jimmy, what is it?" cried Mary.

"Me cane!" answered Jimmy. "Me new cane from Boston. Didn't you hear
Dannie sayin' what it was? This little arrangemint is my cicly-meter,
like they put on wheels, and buggies now, to tell how far you've
traveled. The way this works, I just tie this silk thrid to me door
knob and off I walks, it a reeling out behind, and whin I turn back it
takes up as I come, and whin I get home I take the yardstick and
measure me string, and be the same token, it tells me how far I've
traveled." As he talked he drew out another shining length and added it
to the first, and then another and a last, fine as a wheat straw.
"These last jints I'm adding," he explained to Mary, "are so that if I
have me cane whin I'm riding I can stritch it out and touch up me
horses with it. And betimes, if I should iver break me old cane fish
pole, I could take this down to the river, and there,