to say so. I ain't thought of it for years. How'd you
find out so much?"

"I guess I don't have to be in a place long without hearin' all there is
to hear," said Lily, coming out in her crisp pink muslin. "Here, you
hook me up. Why, mother, he's Wilfred's own uncle! Wilfred told me. He
said his uncle never'd been the same man since his wife run away."

Jim was wandering back to the road, deflected now and then by some
starveling plant.

"Anything you want to do," called Mrs. Marshall, with a compensatory
impulse, "you're welcome to. I may put in a few seeds."

Jim stood there, shaking his head in great dissatisfaction.

"It wouldn't ha' done a mite o' good for me to come here while he was
alive," he said, as if he accounted to himself for that grievous lapse.
"He'd ha' turned me out, neck an' crop, if I'd laid a finger on it."

"Well, you come when you can," said Mrs. Marshall. She was benevolently
willing to fall in with Gardener Jim's peculiarities, because, being
love-cracked, he had no particular occupation save this self-chosen one.
"What you s'pose I said to the new minister about you, Jim?" she
continued kindly.

"Dunno," returned Jim, in his soft voice. "Dunno."

"Well, he says to me, 'I never see such a lot o' nice gardins as there
is round here.' 'Don't you know the reason?' says I. 'Why, Gardener Jim
goes round an' takes care of 'em without money an' without price.' Wake
up, Jim. That's what I said."

The look of response had vanished from his face. He had taken a knife
from his pocket and was clipping a dead branch from the prairie queen at
the window. When the deed had been done with great nicety, he closed the
knife, returned it to his pocket, and took his way silently out of the
yard. Mrs. Marshall, glancing up from her sewing, saw him again
trudging toward his lonely home.

When Jim went along like that, his head bent and his eyes fixed upon the
ground, people often wondered whether he was thinking of anything at
all, or whether such intentness did betoken a grave preoccupation.
Sometimes they tested him. "What you thinkin' about, Jim?" one would ask
him, when they met upon the road; but Jim never replied in any
illuminating way. If he answered at all, it was only to query, "How's
your gardin?" and then, as soon as the response was given, to nod and
hurry on again. If the garden was reported as not doing very well, Jim
was there next morning, like the family doctor.

To-day, when he reached