When he could do no more, he looked it over with approval and said:  “Thar!  If I’d a done that for Miss Butterworth, I couldn’t ‘a’ done better nor that.”  Then he went back to his cabin muttering:  “I wonder what she’d ‘a’ said if she’d hearn that little speech o’ mine!”

What remained for Jim to do was to make provision to feed his boarders.  His trusty rifle stood in the corner of his cabin, and Jim had but to take it in his hand to excite the expectations of his dog, and to receive from him, in language as plain as an eager whine and a wagging tail could express, an offer of assistance.  Before night there hung in front of his cabin a buck, dragged with difficulty through the woods from the place where he had shot him.  A good part of the following day was spent in cutting from the carcass every ounce of flesh, and packing it into pails, to be stowed in a spring whose water, summer and winter alike, was almost at the freezing point.

“He’ll need a good deal o’ lookin’ arter, and I shan’t hunt much the fust few days,” said Jim to himself; “an’ as for flour, there’s a sack on’t, an’ as for pertaters, we shan’t want many on ’em till they come agin, an’ as for salt pork, there’s a whole bar’l buried, an’ as for the rest, let me alone!”

Jim had put off the removal for ten days, partly to get time for all his preparations, and partly that the rapidly advancing spring might give him warmer weather for the removal of a delicate patient.  He found, however, at the conclusion of his labors, that he had two or three spare days on his hands.  His mind was too busy and too much excited by his enterprise to permit him to engage in any regular employment, and he roamed around the woods, or sat whittling in the sun, or smoked, or thought of Miss Butterworth.  It was strange how, when the business upon his 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?”