Trenholme's face twitched with a peculiar smile. "I can handle an axe. I
can learn to fell trees."

"I mean, the living is rough, and all that; and of course" (this was
added with suspicious caution) "it wouldn't be worth my while to pay the
same wages to an inexperienced hand."

Trenholme laughed. This reception was slightly different from what he
had anticipated. He remarked that he might be taken a week on trial, and
to this Bates agreed, not without some further hesitation. Trenholme
inquired after the health of the old aunt of whom he had heard.

"In bodily health," said Bates, "she is well. You may perhaps have heard
that in mind she has failed somewhat."

The man's reserve was his dignity, and it produced its result, although
obvious dignity of appearance and manner was entirely lacking to him.

The toothless, childish old man woman Trenholme encountered when he
entered the house struck him as an odd exaggeration of the report he had
just received. He did not feel at home when he sat down to eat the food
Bates set before him; he perceived that it was chiefly because in a new
country hospitality is considered indispensable to an easy conscience
that he had received any show of welcome.

Yet the lank brown hand that set his mug beside him shook so that some
tea was spilt. Bates was in as dire need of the man he received so
unwillingly as ever man was in need of his fellow-man. It is when the
fetter of solitude has begun to eat into a man's flesh that he begins to