He had a long consultation with Mike Conlin, who agreed to draw his lumber to the river whenever he should see fit to begin his enterprise.  He had taken along a list of tools, furnished him by Benedict; and Mike carried him to Sevenoaks with the purpose of taking back whatever, in the way of stores, they should purchase.  Jim was full of reminiscences of his night’s drive, and pointed out to Mike all the localities of his great enterprise.  Things had undergone a transformation about the poor-house, and Jim stopped and inquired tenderly for Tom Buffum, and learned that soon after the escape of Benedict the man had gone off in an apoplectic fit.

“He was a pertickler friend o’ mine,” said Jim, smiling in the face of the new occupant, “an’ I’m glad he went off so quick he didn’t know where he was goin’.  Left some rocks, didn’t he?”

The man having replied to Jim’s tender solicitude, that he believed the family were sufficiently well provided for, the precious pair of sympathizers went off down the hill.

Jim and Mike had a busy day in Sevenoaks, and at about eight o’clock in the evening, Miss Keziah Butterworth was surprised in her room by the announcement that there was a strange man down stairs who desired to see her.  As she entered the parlor of the little house, she saw a tall man standing upright in the middle of the room, with his fur cap in his hand, and a huge roll of cloth under his arm.

“Miss Butterworth, how fare ye?” said Jim.

“I remember you,” said Miss Butterworth, peering up into his face to read his features in the dim light.  “You are Jim Fenton, whom I met last spring at the town meeting.”

“I knowed you’d remember me.  Women allers does.  Be’n purty chirk this summer?”

“Very well, I thank you, sir,” and Miss Butterworth dropped a courtesy, and then, sitting down, she pointed him to a chair.

Jim laid his cap on the floor, placed his roll of cloth upright between his knees, and, pulling out his bandana handkerchief, wiped his perspiring face.

“I’ve brung a little job fur ye,” said Jim.

“Oh, I can’t do it,” said Miss Butterworth at once.  “I’m crowded to death with work.  It’s a hurrying time of year.”

“Yes, I knowed that, but this is a pertickler job.”

“Oh, they are all particular jobs,” responded Miss Butterworth, shaking her head.

“But this is a job fur pertickler folks.”

“Folks are all alike to me,” said Miss Butterworth, sharply.

“These clo’es,” said Jim, “are fur a good man an’ a little boy.  They has nothin’ but rags on ’em, an’ won’t have till ye make these clo’es.  The man is a pertickler friend o’ mine, an’ the boy is a cute little chap, an’ he can pray better nor any minister in Sevenoaks.  If you knowed what I know, Miss Butterworth, I don’t know but you’d do somethin’ that you’d be ashamed of, an’ I don’t know but you’d do something that I sh’d be ashamed of.  Strange things has happened, an’ if ye want to know what they be, you must make these clo’es.”