as great an attraction to him as he was to me,
but he showed it in a very different way. There would be threatening
movements made with his fists. After an hour's hard work at weeding,
without paying the slightest heed to my presence, he would suddenly jump
up as if resenting my watching, catch up the basket, and make believe to
hurl it at me. Perhaps he would pick up a great clod and pretend to
throw that, but let it fall beside him; while one day, when I went to
the window and looked out, I found him with a good-sized switch which
had been the young shoot of a pear tree, and a lump of something of a
yellowish brown tucked in the fork of a tree close by where he worked.

He had a basket by his side and was busily engaged as usual weeding, for
there was a great battle for ever going on in that garden, where the
weeds were always trying to master the flowers and vegetables, and that
boy's duty seemed to be to tear up weeds by the roots, and nothing else.

But there by his side stuck in the ground was the switch, and as soon as
he saw me at the window he gave a look round to see if he was watched,
and then picked up the stick.

"I wonder what he is going to do!" I thought, as I twisted the glass a
little and had a good look.

He was so near that the glass was not necessary, but I saw through it
that he pinched off a bit of the yellowish-brown stuff, which was
evidently clay, and, after rolling it between his hands, he stuck what
seemed to be a bit as big as a large taw marble on the end of the
switch, gave it a flourish, and the bit of clay flew off.

I could not see where it went, but I saw him watching it, as he quickly
took another piece, kneaded it, and with another flourish away that
flew.

That bit evidently went over our house; and the next time he
tried--_flap_! the piece struck the wall somewhere under the window.

Five times more did he throw, the clay flying swiftly, till all at once
_thud_! came a pellet and stuck on the window pane just above my head.

I looked up at the flattened clay, which was sticking fast, and then at
that boy, who was down on his knees again weeding away as hard as he
could weed, but taking no more notice of me, and I saw the reason: his
master was coming down the garden.

CHAPTER TWO.

OLD BROWNSMITH.

I used to take a good deal of notice of that boy's master as I sat at
the window, and it always seemed to me that he went up and down his
garden because he was so f