ide of each cuff had disappeared. It was as if they were living things
that had turned and bitten him for the blow he gave them.

* * * * *

From the time the sun went down there was a tingle of frost in the air.
Mr. Trimm didn't sleep much. Under the squeeze of the tightened fetters
his wrists throbbed steadily and racking cramps ran through his arms.
His stomach felt as though it were tied into knots. The water that he
drank from the branch only made his hunger sickness worse. His
undergarments, that had been wet with perspiration, clung to him
clammily. His middle-aged, tenderly-cared-for body called through every
pore for clean linen and soap and water and rest, as his empty insides
called for food.

After a while he became so chilled that the demand for warmth conquered
his instinct for caution. He felt about him in the darkness, gathering
scraps of dead wood, and, after breaking several of the matches that had
been in the gun-metal match safe, he managed to strike one and with its
tiny flame started a fire. He huddled almost over the fire, coughing
when the smoke blew into his face and twisting and pulling at his arms
in an effort to get relief from the everlasting cramps. It seemed to him
that if he could only get an inch or two more of play for his hands he
would be ever so much more comfortable. But he couldn't, of course.

He dozed, finally, sitting crosslegged with his head sunk between his
hunched shoulders. A pain in a new place woke him. The fire had burned
almost through the thin sole of his right shoe, and as he scrambled to
his feet and stamped, the clap of the hot leather flat against his
blistered foot almost made him cry out.

* * * * *

Soon after sunrise a boy came riding a horse down a faintly traced
footpath along the creek, driving a cow with a bell on her neck ahead of
him. Mr. Trimm's ears caught the sound of the clanking bell before
either the cow or her herder was in sight, and he limped away, running,
skulking through the thick cover. A pendent loop of a wild grapevine,
swinging low, caught his hat and flipped it off his head; but Mr. Trimm,
imagining pursuit, did not stop to pick it up and went on bareheaded
until he had to stop from exhaustion. He saw some dark-red berries on a
shrub upon which he had trod, and, stooping, he plucked some of them
with his two hands and put three or four in his mouth experimentally.
Warned