we're sort of friends. But I ain't never seen him but twice
in my life, and then both times I met him in the woods, so I ain't never
mentioned nothin' about him to other folks."

"That's splendid! It is just what I hoped. It couldn't be better! I want
you now to tell me what you talked about when you and Handsome met each
other those two times in the woods."

"That's easy. The first time, I was walking through the woods, up about
where you are going--that is, it was in that region--when I heard
somebody hollerin' fur help. At first I couldn't tell for the life of me
where the hollerin' come from; but after a leetle I located it up on the
side of one of them steep hills, and so I crawled up there. Well, when I
got there, I found that a man had slid into a hole in the rocks, and
that he couldn't git out nohow. If I hadn't happened along the chances
are that he'd starved before he'd ha' been helped out."

"And as it was--what?"

"I helped him out. I didn't have no hatchet, but I had a good huntin'
knife along with me, and I managed to whittle down a good-sized spruce,
which I trimmed so's to make a sort of ladder of it. When that was done
I lowered the butt end of it into the hole, and Handsome--that was who
it was in the bottom of the hole--he climbed up so's I could get hold of
him, and then I pulled him out. There wasn't much to that, was there?"

"It saved his life."

"Probably."

"Wasn't he grateful?"

"Suttingly."

"What did you talk about after that?"

"We sot down there a spell and chinned, that's all. He axed me who I
was, and I told him. He axed me if I was long in these parts, and I told
him allers. He axed me where I lived, and I told him about this cottage.
That's all--only he said he was a hobo, and that he was called Handsome.
I allowed that the people who called him that lied mightily; but I
didn't say so jest then."

"What more was talked about?"

"Nothin'."

"When was the next time you saw him?"

"That was in the middle of the summer, and it was farther south--not far
from the railroad tracks."

"Well, what happened then?"

"That was the time he helped me."

"How was that?"

"I can't never tell you exactly how it was, but somehow I had got my
foot wedged in the root of a tree, and I had been tryin' an hour to git
it out, without success. The tree was hard, and I was just tacklin' that
root with my knife--I'd have cut through it in about an hour, I
reckon--when 'long comes that fe