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He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes still on the ground. There was something infinitely pathetic in the attitude. “Ye ain’t done nothin’ to me,” he answered, slowly, “and ye ain’t done nothin’ to Ruby. I cottoned to ye fust time I see ye, and so did Ruby, and we still do. It ain’t that.”

“Well, what is it, then? Why have you kept away from me?”

He arose wearily until his whole length was erect, hooked his long arms behind his back, and began walking up and down the platform. He was no longer my comrade of the woods. The spring and buoyancy of his step had gone out of him. He seemed shrivelled and bent, as if some sudden weakness had overcome him. His face was white and drawn, and the eyelids drooped, as if he had not slept.

At the second turn he stopped, gazed abstractedly at the boards under his feet, as a man sometimes does when his mind is on other things. Mechanically he stooped to pick up a small iron nut that had slipped from one of the bolts used in repairing the wheel, and in the same abstracted way, still ignoring me, raised it to his eye, looked through the hole for a moment, and then tossed it into the dam. The splash of the iron striking the water frightened a bird, which arose in the air, sang a clear, sweet note, and disappeared in the bushes on the opposite bank. Jim started, turned his head quickly, following the flight of the bird, and sank slowly back upon the bench, his face in his hands.

“There it is again,” he cried out. “Every way I turn it’s the same thing. I can’t even chuck nothin’ overboard but I hear it.”

“Hear what?” The keen anguish expressed in his voice had alarmed me.

“That song-sparrow–did ye hear it? I tell ye this thing’ll drive me crazy. I tell ye I can’t stand it–I can’t stand it.” And he turned his head and covered his face with his sleeve.

The outburst and gesture only intensified my anxiety. Was Jim’s mind giving away? I arose from my seat and bent over him, my hand on his arm.

“Why, that’s only a bird, Jim–I saw it–it’s gone into the bushes.”

“Yes, I know it; I seen it; that’s what hurts me; that’s what’s allus goin’ to hurt me. And ’tain’t only goin’ to be the birds. It’s goin’ to be the trees and the gray-backs and the trout we catched, and everywhere I look and every place I go to it’s goin’ to be the same thing. And it ain’t never goin’ to be no better–never–never–long as I live. She said so. Them was her very words I ain’t never goin’ to forgit ’em.” And he leaned his head in a baffled, tired way against the planking of the mill.

“Who said so, Jim?” I asked.

Jim raised his head, looked me straight in the face and, with the tears starting in his eyes, answered in a low voice:

“Ruby. She loves ’em–loves every one o’ ’em. Oh, what’s goin’ to become o’ me now, anyhow?”

“Well, but I don’t–” The revelation came to me before I could complete the sentence. Jim’s face had told the story of his heart!

“Jim,” I said, laying my hand on his shoulder, “do you love Ruby?”

“Sit down here,” he said, in a hopeless, despondent voice, “and mebbe I’ll git grit enough to tell ye. I ain’t never told none o’ the folks that comes up here o’ how things was, but I’m goin’ to tell you. And I’m goin’ to tell it to ye plumb from the beginnin’. too.” And a sigh like the moan of one in pain escaped him.

“Twelve years ago I come here from New York. I’d been cleaned out o’ everything I had by a man I trusted, and I was flat broke. I didn’t care where I went, so’s I got away from the city and from people. I wanted to git somewheres out into the country, and so I got aboard the train and kep’ on till I’d struck Plymouth. There my money gin out and I started up the road into the mountains. I thought I’d hire out to some choppers for the winter. When night come I see a light and knocked at the door and Jed opened it. He warn’t goin’ to keep me, but he was a-buildin’ the shed where the old mare is now, and he found out I was handy with the tools and didn’t want no wages, only my board, so he let me stay. The next spring he hired me regular and give me wages every month. I kep’ along, choppin’ in the winter and helpin’ ’round the place, and in summer goin’ out with the parties that come up from the city, helpin.’ ’em fish and hunt. I liked that, for I loved the woods ever since I was a boy, when I used to go off by myself and stay days and nights with nothin’ but a tin can o’ grub and a blanket. That’s why I come here when I went broke.