be off. I don't see women much, but I'm fond of 'em, and they're pretty
apt to like me."

"Good-bye," said the woman. "I think you're the best man I've seen
to-day;" and then, as if she had said more than became a modest woman,
she added, "and that isn't saying very much."

They parted, and Jim Fenton stood perfectly still in the street and
looked at her, until she disappeared around a corner. "That's what I
call a genuine creetur'," he muttered to himself at last, "a genuine
creetur'."

Then Jim Fenton went into the store, where he had sold his skins and
bought his supplies, and, after exchanging a few jokes with those who
had observed his interview with Miss Butterworth, he shouldered his sack
as he called it, and started for Number Nine. The sack was a contrivance
of his own, with two pouches which depended, one before and one behind,
from his broad shoulders. Taking his rifle in his hand, he bade the
group that had gathered around him a hearty good-bye, and started on his
way.

The afternoon was not a pleasant one. The air was raw, and, as the sun
went toward its setting, the wind came on to blow from the north-west.
This was just as he would have it. It gave him breath, and stimulated
the vitality that was necessary to him in the performance of his long
task. A tramp of forty miles was not play, even to him, and this long
distance was to be accomplished before he could reach the boat that
would bear him and his burden into the woods.

He crossed the Branch at its principal bridge, and took the same path up