"I knew you would think me mad. I'm going to Bates's clearing to cut
down his trees."

"Why?" The word came with a certain authority.

"You would almost be justified in writing to the authorities to lock me
up in an asylum, wouldn't you? But just consider what an awful condition
of loneliness that poor wretch must be in by this time. You think I've
been more alone than's good for me; think of him, shut up with an old
woman in her dotage. He was awfully cut up about this affair of old
Cameron and the girl, and he is losing all his winter's lumbering for
want of a man. Now, there's a fix, if you will, where I say a man is to
be pitied."

"Yes," said Turrif, gravely, "it is sad; but sat is _hees_ trouble."

"Look here: he's not thirty miles away, and you and I know that if he
isn't fit to cut his throat by this time it isn't for want of trouble to
make him, and you say that that state of things ought to be only his own
affair?"

"Eh?"

"Well, I say that you and I, or at least I, have something to do with
it. You know very well I might go round here for miles, and offer a
hundred pounds, and I couldn't get a single man to go and work for
Bates; they're all scared. Well, if they're scared of a ghost, let them
stay away; but _I'm_ not frightened, and I suppose I could learn to chop
down trees as well as any of them. He's offered good wages; I can take