Gardener Jim took his way into Eliza's part of the yard. She turned and looked at him uneasily, as if she wondered what exactions he might make to-day. Wilfred thought her face had changed of late. There were marks of agitation upon it, as if she had been stirred by unaccustomed thoughts and then had tried to hide them. Her eyes were troubled. Gardener Jim walked over to the tall fence. "Here, Wilfred," said he, "you take your axe an' knock off them boards. The posts'll go too, give 'em a chance. They're pretty nigh rotted off." Eliza came awake. "Don't you touch my fence!" she called. "Don't you so much as lay a finger on it." Wilfred gave her a compliant look. "You can't do that, you know," he said, in an undertone, to Gardener Jim. "It's their fence. They don't want it down." Gardener Jim made no answer. He took the axe from Wilfred's hand and dealt the fence a stroke, and then another, and at every one it seemed as if something fell. Eliza strode over to him, and, without reason, stood there. Sophy left her seed-sowing on the other side and came also, and she, too, watched the boards falling. The women were pale and their eyes showed terror, whether at the unchained power of the man or at the wonder of life, no one could have told. Wilfred sauntered away to the old apple-tree, and began picking off twigs here and there, to drop them on the grass. Gardener Jim threw down the axe at last and wiped his forehead. "Where you want them boards piled?" he asked Eliza briefly. "Down there by the wood-shed." Her voice trembled. "They'll make good kindlin'." Over the space where two or three sound posts were standing, she spoke to her sister. There was something strident in her voice, as if she pleaded for strength to break the web of years. "You better have some o' them boards." "Mebbe I had," said Sophy. "Here, Wilfred," called Gardener Jim. "You pile them boards an' I'll see if I can't loosen up the dirt a mite round this old phlox. Anybody must be a 'tarnal fool to build up a high board-fence an' cut off the sun from things when they're tryin' to grow." Sophy looked timidly at her sister. "I s'pose 'tis foolish to try to have anything if you don't take care on 't," she said. Eliza cleared her throat and answered with the same irrelevance:-- "He's fixed up the pinies real nice. See 'f you remember which the white one was." Sophy stepped over the dividing line, and the two sisters walked away to the peony settlement. Gardener Jim touched Wilfred on the arm. "You go along," said he. "I'll finish here. You 'tend to Annie's gardin. I hove a trowel over the fence there this mornin'. You go an' git up some o' them weeds."