she had said more than became a modest woman,
she added, "and that isn't saying very much."

They parted, and Jim Fenton stood perfectly still in the street and
looked at her, until she disappeared around a corner. "That's what I
call a genuine creetur'," he muttered to himself at last, "a genuine
creetur'."

Then Jim Fenton went into the store, where he had sold his skins and
bought his supplies, and, after exchanging a few jokes with those who
had observed his interview with Miss Butterworth, he shouldered his sack
as he called it, and started for Number Nine. The sack was a contrivance
of his own, with two pouches which depended, one before and one behind,
from his broad shoulders. Taking his rifle in his hand, he bade the
group that had gathered around him a hearty good-bye, and started on his
way.

The afternoon was not a pleasant one. The air was raw, and, as the sun
went toward its setting, the wind came on to blow from the north-west.
This was just as he would have it. It gave him breath, and stimulated
the vitality that was necessary to him in the performance of his long
task. A tramp of forty miles was not play, even to him, and this long
distance was to be accomplished before he could reach the boat that
would bear him and his burden into the woods.

He crossed the Branch at its principal bridge, and took the same path up
the hill that Robert Belcher had traveled in the morning. About half-way
up the hill, as he was going on with the stride of a giant, he saw a
little boy at the side of the road, who had evidently been weeping. He
was thinly and very shabbily clad, and was shivering with cold. The
great, healthy heart within Jim Fenton was touched in an instant.

"Well, bub," said he, tenderly, "how fare ye? How fare ye? Eh?"

"I'm pretty well, I thank you, sir," replied the lad.

"I guess not. You're as blue as a whetstone. You haven't got as much on
you as a picked goose."

"I can't help it, sir," and the boy burst into tears.

"Well, well, I didn't mean to trouble you, boy. Here, take this money,
and buy somethin' to make you happy. Don't tell your dad you've got it.
It's yourn."

The boy made a gesture of rejection, and said: "I don't wish to take it,
sir."

"Now, that's good! Don't wish to take it! Why, what's your name? You're
a new sort o' boy."

"My name is Harry Benedict."

"Harry Benedict? And what's your pa's name?"

"His name is Paul Benedict."

"Where is he now?"

"He is in