mazement. He had forgotten his goggles and fur
coat.

"What's the matter?" he asked in high-keyed tones of surprise.

Nance made no answer but crouched lower and attempted to put the table
between them.

"What t'ell Bill ails you--will you tell me?" he asked with rising
wrath.

"I THOUGHT you wuz the devil," the old woman panted. "Now I KNOW it!"

Jim suddenly remembered his goggles and coat, and broke into a laugh.

"Oh!"

He removed his goggles and cap, threw back his big coat and squared his
shoulders with a smile.

"How's that?"

Nance glowered at him with ill-concealed rage, looked him over from head
to foot, and answered with a snarl:

"'Tain't much better--ef ye ax ME!"

"Gee! But you're a sociable old wild-cat!" he exclaimed, starting back
as if she had struck him a blow.

His eye caught the dried skin of a young wildcat hanging on the log
wall.

"No wonder you skinned your neighbor and hung her up to dry," he added
moodily.

He took in the room with deliberate insolence while the old woman stood
awkwardly watching him, shifting her position uneasily from one foot to
the other.

In all his miserable life in New York he could not recall a room more
bare of comforts. The rough logs were chinked with pieces of wood and
daubed with red clay. The door was made of rough boards, the ceiling
of hewn logs with split slabs laid across them. An old-fashioned, tall
spinning wheel, dirty and unused, sat in the corner. A rough pine table
was in the middle of the floor and a smaller one against the wall.
On this side table sat two rusty flat-irons, and against it leaned an
ironing board. A dirty piece of turkey-red calico hung on a string for
a portiere at the opening which evidently led into a sort of kitchen
somewhere in the darkness beyond.

The walls were decorated at intervals. A huge bunch of onions hung on
a wooden peg beside the wild-cat skin. Over the window was slung an
old-fashioned muzzle-loading musket. The sling which held it was made of
a pair of ancient home-made suspenders fastened to the logs with nails.
Beneath the gun hung a cow's horn, cut and finished for powder, and with
it a dirty game-bag. Strings of red peppers were strung along each of
the walls, with here and there bunches of popcorn in the ears. A pile of
black walnuts lay in one corner of the cabin and a pile of hickory nuts
in another.

A three-legged wooden stool and a split-bottom chair stood beside the
table, and a hai