CHAPTER V.
IN WHICH, JIM ENLARGES HIS ACCOMMODATIONS AND ADOPTS A VIOLENT METHOD OF SECURING BOARDERS.
When Jim Fenton waked from his long and refreshing sleep, after his weary tramp and his row upon the river, the sun was shining brightly, the blue-birds were singing, the partridges were drumming, and a red squirrel, which even Turk would not disturb, was looking for provisions in his cabin, or eyeing him saucily from one of the beams over his head. He lay for a moment, stretching his huge limbs and rubbing his eyes, thinking over what he had undertaken, and exclaiming at last: "Well, Jim, ye've got a big contrack," he jumped up, and, striking a fire, cooked his breakfast.
His first work was to make an addition to his accommodations for lodgers, and he set about it in thorough earnest. Before noon he had stripped bark enough from the trees in his vicinity to cover a building as large as his own. The question with him was whether he should put up an addition to his cabin, or hide a new building somewhere behind the trees in his vicinity. In case of pursuit, his lodgers would need a cover, and this he knew he could not give them in his cabin; for all who were in the habit of visiting the woods were familiar with that structure, and would certainly notice any addition to it, and be curious about it. Twenty rods away there was a thicket of hemlock, and by removing two or three trees in its center, he could successfully hide from any but the most inquisitive observation the cabin he proposed to erect. His conclusion was quickly arrived at, and before he slept that night the trees were down, the frame was up, and the bark was gathered. The next day sufficed to make the cabin habitable; but he lingered about the work for several days, putting up various appointments of convenience, building a broad bed of hemlock boughs, so deep and fragrant and inviting, that he wondered he had never undertaken to do as much for himself as he had thus gladly done for others, and making sure that there was no crevice at which the storms of spring and summer could force an entrance.
When he could do no more, he looked it over with approval and said: "Thar! If I'd a done that for Miss Butterworth, I couldn't 'a' done better nor that." Then he went back to his cabin muttering: "I wonder what she'd 'a' said if she'd hearn that little speech o' mine!"
What remained for Jim to do was to make provision to feed his boarders. His trusty rifle stood in the corner of his cabin, and Jim had but to take it in his hand to excite the expectations of his dog, and to receive from him, in language as plain as an eager whine and a wagging tail could express, an offer of assistance. Before night there hung in front of his cabin a buck, dragged with difficulty through the woods from the place where he had shot him. A good part of the following day was spent in cutting from the carcass every ounce of flesh, and packing it into pails, to be stowed in a spring whose water, summer and winter alike, was almost at the freezing point.
"He'll need a good deal o' lookin' arter, and I shan't hunt much the fust few days," said Jim to himself; "an' as for flour, there's a sack on't, an' as for pertaters, we shan't want many on 'em till they come agin, an' as for salt pork, there's a whole bar'l buried, an' as for the rest, let me alone!"
Jim had put off the removal for ten days, partly to get time for all his preparations, and partly that the rapidly advancing spring might give him warmer weather for the removal of a delicate patient. He found, however, at the conclusion of his labors, that he had two or three spare days on his hands. His mind was too busy and too much excited by his enterprise to permit him to engage in any regular employment, and he roamed around the woods, or sat whittling in the sun, or smoked, or thought of Miss Butterworth. It was strange how, when the business upon his hands was suspended, he went back again and again, to his brief interview with that little woman. He thought of her eyes full of tears, of her sympathy with the poor, of her smart and saucy speech when he parted with her, and he said again and again to himself, what he said on that occasion: "she's a genuine creetur!" and the last time he said it, on the day before his projected expedition, he added: "an' who knows!"
Then a bright idea seized him, and taking out a huge jack-knife, he went through the hemlocks to his new cabin, and there carved into the slabs of bark that constituted its door, the words "Number Ten." This was the crowning grace of that interesting structure. He looked at it close, and then from a distance, and then he went back chuckling to his cabin, to pass his night in dreams of fast driving before the fury of all Sevenoaks, with Phipps and his gray trotters in advance.