is hands was suspended, he went back again and again, to his brief
interview with that little woman. He thought of her eyes full of tears,
of her sympathy with the poor, of her smart and saucy speech when he
parted with her, and he said again and again to himself, what he said on
that occasion: "she's a genuine creetur!" and the last time he said it,
on the day before his projected expedition, he added: "an' who knows!"

Then a bright idea seized him, and taking out a huge jack-knife, he went
through the hemlocks to his new cabin, and there carved into the slabs
of bark that constituted its door, the words "Number Ten." This was the
crowning grace of that interesting structure. He looked at it close, and
then from a distance, and then he went back chuckling to his cabin, to
pass his night in dreams of fast driving before the fury of all
Sevenoaks, with Phipps and his gray trotters in advance.

Early on Friday morning preceding his proposed descent upon the
poor-house, he gave his orders to Turk.

"I'm goin' away, Turk," said he. "I'm goin' away agin. Ye was a good dog
when I went away afore, and ye berhaved a good deal more like a
Christian nor a Turk. Look out for this 'ere cabin, and look out for
yerself. I'm a goin' to bring back a sick man, an' a little feller to
play with ye. Now, ole feller, won't that be jolly? Ye must'n't make no
noise when I come--understand?"

Turk wagged his tail in assent, and Jim departed, believing that his dog
had understood every word as completely as if he were a man.
"Good-bye--here's hopin'," said Jim, waving his hand to Turk as he
pushed his boat from the bank, and disappeared down the river. The dog
watched him until he passed from sight, and then went back to the cabin
to mope away the period of his master's absence.

Jim sat in the stern of his little boat, guiding and propelling it with
his paddle. Flocks of ducks rose before him, and swashed down with a
fluttering ricochet into the water again, beyond the shot of his rifle.
A fish-hawk, perched above his last year's nest, sat on a dead limb and
watched him as he glided by. A blue heron rose among the reeds, looked
at him quietly, and then hid behind a tree. A muskrat swam shoreward
from his track, with only his nose above water. A deer, feeding among
the lily-pads, looked up, snorted, and then wheeled and plunged into the
woods. All these things he saw, but they made no more impression upon
his memory than is left upon the c