In the lower part of the hut he kept his basket stuff
and his collection of two-legged and three-legged chairs.
In the course of evolution they never sprouted another leg,
those chairs; as they were given to him, so they remained.
The upper floor served for his living-room, and was reached
by a ladder from the ground, for there was no stairway inside.
No one had ever been in the little upper chamber.
When a passer-by chanced to be-think him that Tom's
hermitage was close at hand, he sometimes turned in his
team by a certain clump of white birches and drove nearer
to the house, intending to remind Tom that there was a chair
to willow-bottom the next time he came to the village.
But at the noise of the wheels Tom drew in his ladder;
and when the visitor alighted and came within sight,
it was to find the inhospitable host standing in the opening
of the second-story window, a quaint figure framed
in green branches, the ladder behind him, and on his face
a kind of impenetrable dignity, as he shook his head and said,
"Tom ain't ter hum; Tom's gone to Bonny Eagle.
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