"Here's the store, and I must shoulder my sack and be off.

I don't see women much, but I'm fond of 'em, and they're pretty apt to like me." "Good-bye," said the woman.

"I think you're the best man I've seen to-day;" and then, as if she had said more than became a modest woman, she added, "and that isn't saying very much." They parted, and Jim Fenton stood perfectly still in the street and looked at her, until she disappeared around a corner.

"That's what I call a genuine creetur'," he muttered to himself at last, "a genuine creetur'." Then Jim Fenton went into the store, where he had sold his skins and bought his supplies, and, after exchanging a few jokes with those who had observed his interview with Miss Butterworth, he shouldered his sack as he called it, and started for Number Nine.

The sack was a contrivance of his own, with two pouches which depended, one before and one behind, from his broad shoulders.