At last Abner walked slowly over to the shadowed masses of piled-up household things and lifted out one of the drawers that had been taken from the framework of the bureau and brought over with their contents. Apparently it was not the right one, for he dragged aside a good many objects to get at another, and rummaged about in this for several minutes. Then he came out again into the small segment of the lantern’s radiance with a pair of long thick woollen stockings of his own in his hand. “You better pull off them wet boots an’ draw these on,” he said, addressing Hagadorn, but looking fixedly just over his head. “It won’t do that cough o’ yours no good, settin’ around with wet feet.” The cooper looked in a puzzled way at the huge butternut-yarn stockings held out under his nose, but he seemed too much taken aback to speak or to offer to touch them. “Yes, father!” said Esther, with quite an air of command. “You know what that cough means,” and straightway Hagadorn lifted one of his feet to his knee and started tugging at the boot-heel in a desultory way. He desisted after a few half-hearted attempts, and began coughing again, this time more distressingly than ever. His daughter sprang forward to help him, but Abner pushed her aside, put the stockings under his arm, and himself undertook the job. He did not bend his back overmuch; but hoisted Jee’s foot well in the air and pulled. “Brace your foot agin mine an’ hold on to the chair!” he ordered, sharply, for the first effect of his herculean pull had been to nearly drag the cooper to the floor. He went at it more gently now, easing the soaked leather up and down over the instep until the boots were off. He looked furtively at the bottoms of these before he tossed them aside, noting, no doubt, as I did, how old and broken and run down at the heel they were. Jee himself peeled off the drenched stockings, and they too were flimsy old things, darned and mended almost out of their original color. These facts served only to deepen my existing low opinion of Hagadorn, but they appeared to affect Abner Beech differently. He stood by and watched the cooper dry his feet and then draw on the warm dry hose over his shrunken shanks, with almost a friendly interest. Then he shoved along one of the blankets across the floor to Hagadorn’s chair that he might wrap his feet in it. “That’s it,” he said, approvingly. “They ain’t no means o’ building a fire here right now, but as luck would have it we’d jest set up an old kitchen stove in the little cow-barn to warm up gruel for the caves with, an’ the first thing we’ll do ’ll be to rig it up in here to cook breakfast by, an’ then we’ll dry them boots o’ yourn in no time. You go an’ pour some oats into ’em now,” Abner added, turning to me. “And you might as well call Hurley. We’ve got considerable to do, an’ daylight’s breakin’.”