“Mought lose ’em, ennyhow, ef I war ter take ’em off,” he said, sturdily adapting his optimism to the cumbrous impediments. And so he limped on. He shivered in every limb. Over and again his breath seemed to fail him. More than once his head whirled, and he leaned against a tree to steady himself. The air was chill, but although the wind blew he was not sorry; it would the earlier dry his garments. “An’ I reckon I hev done cotch all the rheumatiz I kin hold, ennyways, a-layin’ thar under the aidge o’ the ruver, half kivered with water fur a night an’ a day.” When the woods began to give way to fields he hung back, feeling desolate and affrighted. How could he barter these sheltering shadows, this nullifying darkness, for those wide, exposed spaces of the pasture? Its dewy slope, with here and there an outcropping rock, but never a bush nor a tree, lay under the slanting light of the moon. The mountains, however, he knew were in that direction; and presently he took courage to climb the fence, and with his hobbling shadow at his side,—from which he sometimes shrunk with sudden fear, glancing over his shoulder askance,—skulked across the grassy expanse, now in the melancholy sheen, and now in the vague shade of a drifting cloud. There were sheep huddled and white, at one side of the slope, all asleep, save one, that held its head up and looked at him with a contemplative eye as he passed. A dog seemed their only guardian. He did not bark, but came down toward the stranger with a sinister growl. Mink had no fear of dogs, and somehow they trusted him. The shepherd sniffed in surprise at his heels, bounded up to lick his hand, followed with a wagging tail till he climbed the fence, and regretfully saw him take his way down the road. For his courage was renewed by its own achievements. He was bold enough presently to invade a garden where potatoes had lately been planted, and he dug up the sliced fragments, each carefully cut that it might contain two or more “eyes.” He found, too, some turnips, and was greatly refreshed and strengthened by his surreptitious meal. As he rose from the garden border and turned away among the currant bushes, he was confronted suddenly by the figure of a man. He sprang back, his heart plunging. He thought for a moment that he was discovered. And yet—it stood so strangely still. Only a suit of clothes stuffed with straw, and surmounted by an ancient and battered hat. Mink gazed gravely at the scarecrow, that had surpassed its evident destiny in frightening that larger fowl, a jail-bird.