the night when he had
stood so steadily by the tiller of "The Swallow," while she danced,
through the dark, across the rough billows of the Atlantic.

But, on the whole, Dab Kinzer had been a good sleeper all his life till
then. Once in bed, and there had been for him an end of all wakefulness.

On that particular night, for the first time, sleep refused to come,
late as was the hour when the family circle broke up.

It could not have been the excitement of Ham and Miranda's return. He
would have gotten over that by this time. No more could it have been the
fire, though the smell of smouldering hay came in pretty strongly at
times through the wide-open windows. If any one patch of that great
roomy bed was better made up for sleeping than the rest of it, Dab would
surely have found the spot; for he tumbled and rolled all over it in his
restlessness. Some fields on a farm will "grow" wheat better than
others, but no part of the bed seemed to grow any sleep. At last Dab got
wearily up, and took a chair by the window.

The night was dark, but the stars were shining; and every now and then
the wind would make a shovel of itself, and toss up the hot ashes the
fire had left, sending a dull red glare around on the house and barns
for a moment, and flooding all the neighborhood with a stronger smell of
burnt hay.

"If you're going to burn hay," soliloquized Dabney, "it won't do to take
a barn for a stove. Not that kind of a barn. But what did Ham Morris
mean by saying that I was to go to boarding-school? That's what I'd like
to know"

The secret was out.

He had kept remarkably still, for him, all the evening, and had not
asked a question; but, if his brains were ever to work over his books as
they had over Ham's remark, his future chances for sound sleep were all
gone. It had come upon him so suddenly, the very thing he thought about
that night in "The Swallow," and wished for and dreamed about during all
those walks and talks and lessons of all sorts with Ford Foster and
Frank Harley, ever since they came in from that memorable cruise.

It was a wonderful idea, and Dab had his doubts as to the way his mother
would take to it when it should be brought seriously before her. Little
he guessed the truth. Ham's remark had gone deep into other ears as well
as Dabney's; and there were reasons, therefore, why good Mrs. Kinzer was
sitting by the window of her own room, at that very moment, as little
inclined to sleep as was th