place and fished out an iron kettle from a heap of stuff in a
corner. Then he took it and went out of the shack, and I heard him lock
the door after him. He was gone a long time, several hours, I presume.
When he returned he hunted up a battered tin dish and went out again.
Pretty soon he came back with part of a cooked rabbit and some broth.
And I was glad to get it.

"Matters ran along in about that way for some days. I tried at first to
keep track of them, but I was in so much pain that I soon lost count. It
wasn't physical pain alone, either. I went almost crazy myself wondering
what Grace and Aunt Rose would think at not hearing from me. I knew that
as soon as they realized that I had disappeared, they would send some
one to find me. I hadn't the least idea of where I was. I still supposed
that I wasn't far from the lumber camp and expected any moment to see a
search party descend on the hut. I soon found that I couldn't expect any
help from my host. He was crazy as a loon and besides he had a fixed
idea that I was a son of his who had evidently been supposed to be dead
for several years and had now come to life again in the woods. I tried
once to explain to him that I wasn't his son, but it made him so angry
that I was afraid to say anything more about it for fear he'd finish me.
He wouldn't talk much. When he did say anything it was absolutely
without sense. But he'd sit on the floor beside my bed by the hour, and
stare at me out of his wild black eyes. He was good to me, though. He
fed me and took care of me in a way that surprised me.

"Twice he left me for a whole day and a night. When he came back he
brought a lot of provisions with him. He had quite a bit of money in
notes in the shack. He kept it in a box under a board in the floor and
almost every day he'd go there to look at it. He never counted it. He'd
lift the board, haul out the box, pat the roll of bills, croon over it,
and stuff it back again. One thing kept me thinking we were near to the
camp was the provisions he brought in. How he managed to get them
without getting himself locked up was a mystery to me.

"As my leg began to get better, he began to grow less careful of me.
Knowing that I couldn't possibly get away, he would set food and water
beside my bed, lock me in the cabin--he never failed to do that--and go
away for three or four days at a stretch, sometimes longer. Often I used
to be faint with hunger before he'd come back. On one of tho