He wore a glazed white tile, a yellow-brown coat with three capes, cut pen-wiper fashion, and a pair of corduroy trousers whose fulness concealed in part the ellipse of his legs. "Here's a letter from me boss, sor," he blurted out, holding it toward me. "He says I kin go to work in the mornin'. Ye don't mind, do ye, sor?" "Of course I mind, Fin; I'll have trouble to fill your place. Are you sorry to leave?" "Am I sorry, sor? No!--savin' yer presence, I'm glad. What's the good of the country, anyhow, sor, except to make picters in? Of course, it's different wid you, sor, not knowin' the city, but for me--why God rest yer soul, sor, I wouldn't give one cobble of the Strand no bigger'n me fist for the best farm in Surrey. "Call me, sor, next time ye're passin' my rank--any time after twelve at night, and I'll show ye fun enough to last ye yer life." Something dropped out of the landscape that day--something of its brilliancy, color, and charm. The water seemed sluggish, the sky-tones dull, the meadows flat and commonplace. It must have been Fin's laugh! LONG JIM Jim met me at the station. I knew it was Jim when I caught sight of him loping along the platform, craning his neck, his head on one side as if in search of someone. He had the same stoop in his shoulders; the same long, disjointed, shambling body--six feet and more of it--that had earned him his soubriquet. "Guess you be him," he said, recognizing me as easily, his face breaking suddenly into a broad smile as I stepped on to the platform. "Old man 'lowed I'd know ye right away, but I kind o' mistrusted till I see ye stop and look 'raound same's if ye'd lost the trail. I'll take them traps and that bag if ye don't mind," and he relieved me of my sketch-kit and bag. "Buck-board's right out here behind the freight shed," and he pointed across the track. "Old mare's kinder skeery o' the engine, so I tied her a piece off." He was precisely the man I had expected to find--even to his shaggy gray hair matted close about his ears, wrinkled, leathery face, and long, scrawny neck. He wore the same rough, cowhide boots and the very hat I had seen so often reproduced--such a picturesque slouch of a hat with that certain cant to the rim which betokens long usage and not a little comfort, especially on balsam boughs with the sky for a covering, and only the stars to light one to bed. I had heard all these several details and appointments described ever so minutely by an enthusiastic brother brush who had spent the preceding summer with old man Marvin--Jim's employer--but he had forgotten to mention, or had failed to notice, the peculiar softness of Jim's voice and his timid, shrinking eyes--the eyes of a dog rather than those of a man--not cowardly eyes, nor sneaking eyes--more the eyes of one who had suffered constantly from sudden, unexpected blows, and who shrank from your gaze and dodged it as does a hound that misunderstands a gesture.