had always been able, by his command of money and his coarse and
despotic will, to compel him into any course or transaction that he
desired. His nature was offensive to Benedict to an extreme degree, and
when in his presence, particularly when he entered it driven by
necessity, he felt shorn of his own manhood. He felt him to be without
conscience, without principle, without humanity, and was sure that it
needed only to be known that the insane pauper had become a sound and
healthy man to make him the subject of a series of persecutions or
persuasions that would wrest from him the rights and values on which the
great proprietor was foully battening. These rights and values he never
intended to surrender, and until he was strong and independent enough to
secure them to himself, he did not care to expose his gentler will to
the machinations of the great scoundrel who had thrived upon his
unrewarded genius.

So, by degrees, he came to look upon the woods as his home. He was there
at peace. His wife had faded out of the world, his life had been a fatal
struggle with the grossest selfishness, he had come out of the shadows
into a new life, and in that life's simple conditions, cared for by
Jim's strong arms, and upheld by his manly and cheerful companionship,
he intended to build safely the structure of his health, and to erect on
the foundation of a useful experience a better life.

In June, Jim did his planting, confined almost entirely to vegetables,
as there was no mill near enough to grind his wheat and corn should he
succeed in growing them. By the time the young plants were ready for
dressing, Benedict could assist Jim for an hour every day; and when the
autumn came, the invalid of Number Ten had become a heavier man than he
ever was before. Through the disguise of rags, the sun-browned features,
the heavy beard, and the generous and almost stalwart figure, his old
and most intimate friends would have failed to recognize the delicate
and attenuated man they had once known. Jim regarded him with great
pride, and almost with awe. He delighted to hear him talk, for he was
full of information and overflowing with suggestion.

"Mr. Benedict," said Jim one day, after they had indulged in one of
their long talks, "do ye s'pose ye can make a house?"

"Anything."

"A raal house, all ship-shape for a woman to live in?"

"Anything."

"With a little stoop, an' a bureau, an' some chairs, an' a frame, like,
fur posies to