“Yes, because it’s our school holiday,” replied Harry.

“Well, then, in ten days—­that is, a week from next Saturday—­I shall come agin.  Saturday night, don’t ye go to bed.  Leastways, ef ye do, ye must git out of the house afore ten o’clock, and come straight to this old stump.  Can ye git away, an’ nobody seen ye?”

“Yes, I hope so,” replied the boy.  “They don’t mind anything about us.  I could stay out all night, and they wouldn’t know where I was.”

“Well, that’s all right, now.  Remember—­be jest here with all the clo’es ye’ve got, at ten o’clock, Saturday night—­ten days off—­cut ’em in a stick every day—­the next Saturday after the next one, an’ don’t git mixed.”

The boy assured him that he should make no mistake.

“When I come, I sh’ll bring a hoss and wagin.  It’ll be a stiddy hoss, and I sh’ll come here to this stump, an’ stop till I seen ye.  Then ye’ll hold the hoss till I go an’ git yer pa, and then we’ll wopse ’im up in some blankits, an’ make a clean streak for the woods.  It’ll be late Sunday mornin’ afore any body knows he’s gone, and there won’t be no people on the road where we are goin’, and ef we’re druv into cover, I know where the cover is.  Jim Fenton’s got friends on the road, and they’ll be mum as beetles.  Did ye ever seen a beetle, Harry?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, they work right along and don’t say nothin’ to nobody, but they keep workin’; an’ you an’ me has got to be jest like beetles.  Remember! an’ now git back to Tom Buffum’s the best way ye can.”

The boy reassured Jim, gave him a kiss, jumped over the fence, and crept along through the bushes toward the house.  Jim watched him, wrapped in admiration.

“He’s got the ra-al hunter in ’im, jest like his father, but there’s more in ’im nor there ever was in his father.  I sh’d kinder liked to ‘a’ knowed his ma,” said Jim, as he took up his rifle and started in earnest for his home.

As he plodded along his way, he thought over all the experiences of the morning.

“Any man,” said he to himself, “who can string things together in the way Benedict did this mornin’ can be cured.  Startin’ in hell, he was all right, an’ everything reasomble.  The startin’ is the principal p’int, an’ if I can git ’im to start from Number Nine, I’ll fetch ’im round.  He never was so much to home as he was in the woods, an’ when I git ’im thar, and git ‘im fishin’ and huntin’, and sleepin’ on hemlock, an’ eatin’ venison and corn-dodgers, it’ll come to ’im that he’s been there afore, and he’ll look round to find Abram, an’ he won’t see ’im, and his craze ‘ll kind o’ leak out of ’im afore he knows it.”

Jim’s theory was his own, but it would be difficult for Dr. Radcliffe, and all his fellow-devotees of science, to controvert it.  It contented him, at least; and full of plans and hopes, stimulated by the thought that he had a job on hand that would not only occupy his thoughts, but give exercise to the benevolent impulses of his heart, he pressed on, the miles disappearing behind him and shortening before, as if the ground had been charmed.