had perhaps reached long ago and had not yet compared with any one.

"There's a time for everything. There's a time to graft a tree an' a
time to cut it down. Well, it's your time o' life to make a 'tarnal fool
o' yourself. Don't ye do it. If you do, like 's not when you're my age
you'll be all soul alone, like me, an' goin' round 'tendin' to other
folks's gardins."

Wilfred stared at him in wonder.

"I don't know," he found himself saying. "I might fix it, but I guess
'twould be kind o' queer."

Gardener Jim screwed up his face until his eyes were quite eclipsed.

"Queer!" said he. "Nothin' 's queer if you go ahead an' do it an' say
nothin' to nobody. What if they do call ye crazed? That's another way to
make 'em stan' from under an' let ye go it. There! I've said my say.
Ain't that your axe over there by the well? You take it an' come along
o' me. I'd ha' brought mine, only I thought mebbe I shouldn't need it
till to-morrer. But I guess I shall. I guess I shall."

Wilfred followed him along the road to the Miller house, and there they
saw the twins. Sophy, obscured by a sun-bonnet, was on her knees, sowing
seeds in a bed Jim had made for her the day before; but Eliza stood
quite still among the peonies, looking off down the road.

Gardener Jim took his way into Eliza's part of the yard. She turned and
looked at him uneasily, as if she wondered what exactions he might make
to-day. Wilfred thought her face had changed of late. There were marks
of agitation upon it, as if she had been stirred by unaccustomed
thoughts and then had tried to hide them. Her eyes were troubled.

Gardener Jim walked over to the tall fence.

"Here, Wilfred," said he, "you take your axe an' knock off them boards.
The posts'll go too, give 'em a chance. They're pretty nigh rotted off."

Eliza came awake.

"Don't you touch my fence!" she called. "Don't you so much as lay a
finger on it."

Wilfred gave her a compliant look.

"You can't do that, you know," he said, in an undertone, to Gardener
Jim. "It's their fence. They don't want it down."

Gardener Jim made no answer. He took the axe from Wilfred's hand and
dealt the fence a stroke, and then another, and at every one it seemed
as if something fell. Eliza strode over to him, and, without reason,
stood there. Sophy left her seed-sowing on the other side and came also,
and she, too, watched the boards falling. The women were pale and their
eyes showed terror, whether at the unchain