Then I went into the house, and didn't tell my wife about it, she disliking Jim on account of his singular drinks, which had a tidy taste, but affecting a man sudden and surprising. My wife she went off to bed, and I sat by the fire, feeling like there was more wrong in the world than common. And I kept thinking of Jeaney Merimy sitting by herself off there beyond the rain, with the wind singing in the chimney, and Tioba groaning and tooting over her. Then there was the extra woman looking for Jim; and it seemed to me if I was looking for Jim on a dark night, I'd want to let him know beforehand it was all peaceable, so there wouldn't be a mistake, Jim being a sudden man and not particular. I had the extra woman on my mind, so that after some while it seemed to me she had come back and was driving _splish-splash_ around my house, though it was only the wind. I was that foolish I kept counting how many times she went round the house, and it was more than forty; and sometimes she came so close to the front door I thought she'd come through it--_bang!_ Then somebody rapped sudden at the door, and I jumped, and my chair went slap under the table, and I says, “Come in,” though I'd rather it would have stayed out, and in walks Jim Hawks. “'Mighty!” says I. “I thought you was a horse and buggy.” He picked up my chair and sat in it himself, rather cool, and began to dry off. “Horse and buggy?” says he. “Looking for me?” I just nodded, seeing he appeared to know all about it. “Saw 'em in Eastport,” says he. “I suppose she's over there”--meaning his place. “Gone down the road! You don't say! Now, I might have known she wouldn't do what you might call a rational thing. Never could bet on that woman. If there was one of two things she'd be likely to do, she wouldn't do either of 'em.” “Well,” says I, “speaking generally, what might she want of you?” Jim looks at me kind of absent minded, rubbing his hair the wrong way. “Now, look at it, Fargus,” he says. “It ain't reasonable. Now, she and me, we got married about five years ago. And she had a brother named Tom Cheever, and Tom and I didn't agree, and naturally he got hurt; not but that he got well again--that is, partly. And she appeared to have different ideas from me, and she appeared to think she'd had enough of me, and I took that to be reasonable. Now, here she wants me to come back and behave myself, cool as you please. And me inquiring why, she acts like the country was too small for us both. I don't see it that way myself.” And he shook his head, stretching his hands out over the fire. “I don't see either end of it,” says I. “You're a bad one, Jim, a downright bad one.” “That's so. It's Jeaney you mean,” he says, looking kind of interested. “It'll be hell for Jeaney, won't it?”