When Jim called for the clothes, they were done, and there was no money to be paid for the labor. The statement of the fact embarrassed Jim more than anything that had occurred in his interviews with the tailoress. "I sh'll pay ye some time, even if so be that nothin' happens," said he; "an' if so be that somethin' does happen, it'll be squar' any way. I don't want no man that I do fur to be beholden to workin' women for their clo'es." Jim took the big bundle under his left arm, and, extending his right hand, he took Miss Butterworth's, and said: "Good-bye, little woman; I sh'll see ye agin, an' here's hopin'. Don't hurt yerself, and think as well of me as ye can. I hate to go away an' leave every thing loose like, but I s'pose I must. Yes, I don't like to go away so"--and Jim shook his head tenderly--"an' arter I go ye mustn't kick a stone on the road or scare a bird in the trees, for fear it'll be the heart that Jim Fenton leaves behind him." Jim departed, and Miss Butterworth went up to her room, her eyes moist with the effect of the unconscious poetry of his closing utterance. It was still early in the evening when Jim reached the hotel, and he had hardly mounted the steps when the stage drove up, and Mr. Balfour, encumbered with a gun, all sorts of fishing-tackle and a lad of twelve years, leaped out. He was on his annual vacation; and with all the hilarity and heartiness of a boy let loose from school greeted Jim, whose irresistibly broad smile was full of welcome. It was quickly arranged that Jim and Mike should go on that night with their load of stores; that Mr. Balfour and his boy should follow in the morning with a team to be hired for the occasion, and that Jim, reaching home first, should return and meet his guests with his boat at the landing. CHAPTER VIII. IN WHICH MR. BELCHER VISITS NEW YORK, AND BECOMES THE PROPRIETOR OF "PALGRAVE'S FOLLY." The shadow of a mystery hung over Sevenoaks for many months. Handbills advertising the fugitives were posted in all directions throughout the country, but nothing came of them but rumors. The newspapers, far and near, told the story, but it resulted in nothing save such an airing of the Sevenoaks poor-house, and the county establishment connected with the same, that Tom Buffum, who had lived for several years on the border-land of apoplexy, passed suddenly over, and went so far that he never returned to meet the official inquiry into his administration. The Augean stables were cleansed by the Hercules of public opinion; and with the satisfied conscience and restored self-complacency procured by this act, the people at last settled down upon the conviction that Benedict and his boy had shared the fate of old Tilden--that they had lost themselves in the distant forest, and met their death alike beyond help and discovery.