Content to wait? Content to starve, content to freeze, if only
he need not be carried into captivity.
The poor-farm was not a bad place, either, if only Tom
had been a reasonable being. To be sure, when Hannah Sophia
Palmer asked old Mrs. Pinkham how she liked it, she answered,
with a patient sigh, that "her 'n' Mr. Pinkham hed lived
there goin' on nine year, workin' their fingers to the bone
'most, 'n' yet they hadn't been able to lay up a cent!"
If this peculiarity of administration was its worst feature,
it was certainly one that would have had no terrors for Tom o'
the blueb'ry plains. Terrors of some sort, nevertheless,
the poor-farm had for him; and when the sheriff's party
turned in by the clump of white birches and approached
the cabin, they found that fear had made the simple wise.
Tom had provished the little upper chamber, and, in place
of the piece of sacking that usually served him for a door
in winter, he had woven a defense of willow. In fine,
he had taken all his basket stuff, and, treating the opening
through which he entered and left his home precisely as
if it were a bottomless chair, he had filled it in solidly,
weaving to and fro, by night as well as by day, till he felt,
poor fool, as safely intrenched as if he were in the heart
of a fortress.
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