ng like a jail nearer
than Iowa City or Dubuque; but Jim told me that he understood that I was
a terrible ruffian and would have to be looked after very closely. He
made me help him about the blacksmith shop, and I learned so much about
blacksmithing that I finally set up a nice little forge on the farm and
did a good deal of my own work. At last Jim said I was stealing his
trade, and when Virginia Royall came down to the post-office the day the
mail came in, which was a Friday in those days, and came to the shop to
see me, he told her what a fearful criminal I was. She laughed and told
Jim to stop his fooling, not knowing what a very serious thing it
was for me.

When she asked me to come up to see the Elder and Grandma Thorndyke, and
I told her I was a prisoner, Jim paroled me to her, and made her give
him a receipt for me which he wrote out on the anvil on the leaf of his
pass-book, and had her sign it. He said he was glad to get rid of me for
two reasons: one was that I was stealing his trade, and the other that
I was likely to bu'st forth at any time and kill some one, especially a
claim-jumper if there were any left in the county, which he doubted.

So I went with Virginia and spent the night at the elder's. Grandma
Thorndyke took my part, though she made a great many inquiries about
Rowena Fewkes; but the elder warned me solemnly against lawlessness,
though when we were alone together he made me tell him all about the
affair, and seemed to enjoy the more violent parts of it as if it had
been a novel; but when he asked me who were in the "mob" I refused to
tell him, and he said maybe I was right--that my honor might be
involved. Grandma Thorndyke seemed to have entirely got over her fear of
having me and Virginia together, and let us talk alone as much as
we pleased.

I told them about the quantity of wild strawberries I had out in
Vandemark's Folly, and when Virginia asked the sheriff if the elder and
his wife and herself might go out there with me for a
strawberry-and-cream feast, he said his duty made it incumbent upon him
to insist that he and his wife go along, and that they would furnish the
sugar if I would pony up the cream--of which I had a plenty. So we had
quite a banquet out on the farm. Once in a while I would forget about
the assaults and the treason and be quite jolly--and then it would all
come back upon me, and I would break out in a cold sweat. Out of this
grew the first strawberry and cream f