“Do ye know I take to little things wonderful, if they’re only alive?” said he.  “There’s Benedict’s little boy!  I feel ’im fur hours arter I’ve had ‘im in my arms, jest because he’s alive an’ little.  An’ I don’t know—­I—­I vow, I guess I better go away.  Can you git the clo’es made in two days, so I can take ’em home with me?  Can’t ye put ’em out round?  I’ll pay ye, ye know.”

Miss Butterworth thought she could, and on that promise Jim remained in Sevenoaks.

How he got out of the house he did not remember, but he went away very much exalted.  What he did during those two days it did not matter to him, so long as he could walk over to Miss Butterworth’s each night, and watch her light from his cover in the trees.

Before the tailoress closed her eyes in sleep that night her brisk and ready shears had cut the cloth for the two suits at a venture, and in the morning the work was parceled among her benevolent friends, as a work of charity whose objects were not to be mentioned.

When Jim called for the clothes, they were done, and there was no money to be paid for the labor.  The statement of the fact embarrassed Jim more than anything that had occurred in his interviews with the tailoress.

“I sh’ll pay ye some time, even if so be that nothin’ happens,” said he; “an’ if so be that somethin’ does happen, it’ll be squar’ any way.  I don’t want no man that I do fur to be beholden to workin’ women for their clo’es.”

Jim took the big bundle under his left arm, and, extending his right hand, he took Miss Butterworth’s, and said:  “Good-bye, little woman; I sh’ll see ye agin, an’ here’s hopin’.  Don’t hurt yerself, and think as well of me as ye can.  I hate to go away an’ leave every thing loose like, but I s’pose I must.  Yes, I don’t like to go away so”—­and Jim shook his head tenderly—­“an’ arter I go ye mustn’t kick a stone on the road or scare a bird in the trees, for fear it’ll be the heart that Jim Fenton leaves behind him.”

Jim departed, and Miss Butterworth went up to her room, her eyes moist with the effect of the unconscious poetry of his closing utterance.

It was still early in the evening when Jim reached the hotel, and he had hardly mounted the steps when the stage drove up, and Mr. Balfour, encumbered with a gun, all sorts of fishing-tackle and a lad of twelve years, leaped out.  He was on his annual vacation; and with all the hilarity and heartiness of a boy let loose from school greeted Jim, whose irresistibly broad smile was full of welcome.

It was quickly arranged that Jim and Mike should go on that night with their load of stores; that Mr. Balfour and his boy should follow in the morning with a team to be hired for the occasion, and that Jim, reaching home first, should return and meet his guests with his boat at the landing.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN WHICH MR. BELCHER VISITS NEW YORK, AND BECOMES THE PROPRIETOR OF “PALGRAVE’S FOLLY.”