let, will you go 'long home?"

"I 'spect I 'd better be gittin' along.--Good-bye, Freddie; be a good
boy, an' some day I 'll take you up to my house an' let you ride old
Bess around.--Good-bye, Miss Hester." And as he passed out to his buggy
he whistled tenderly something that was whistled when he was a boy.

CHAPTER VI

The life of one boy is much like that of another. They all have their
joys and their griefs, their triumphs and their failures, their loves
and their hates, their friends and their foes, much as men have them in
that maturer life of which the days of youth are an epitome. It would be
rather an uninteresting task, and an entirely thankless one, to follow
in detail the career of Frederick Brent as he grew from childhood to
youth. But in order to understand certain traits that developed in his
character, it will be necessary to note some, at least, of the
circumstances that influenced his early life.

While Miss Prime grew to care for him in her own unemotional way, she
had her own notions of how a boy should be trained, and those notions
seemed to embody the repression of every natural impulse. She reasoned
thus: "Human beings are by nature evil: evil must be crushed: _ergo_,
everything natural must be crushed." In pursuance of this principle,
she followed out a deliberate course of restriction, which, had it not
been for the combating influence of Eliphalet Hodges, would have dwarfed
the mental powers of the boy and cramped his soul beyond endurance. When
he came of an age to play marbles, he was forbidden to play, because it
was, to Miss Hester's mind, a species of gambling. Swimming was too
dangerous to be for a moment considered. Fishing, without necessity, was
wanton cruelty. Flying kites was foolishness and a waste of time.

The boy had shown an aptitude at his lessons that had created in his
guardian's mind some ambition for him, and she held him down to his
books with rigid assiduity. He was naturally studious, but the feeling
that he was being driven made his tasks repellent, although he performed
them without outward sign of rebellion, while he fumed within.

His greatest relaxations were his trips to and from his old friend
Hodges. If Miss Prime crushed him, this gentle soul comforted him and
smoothed out his ruffled feelings. It was this influence that kept him
from despair. Away from his guardian, he was as if a chain that galled
his flesh had been removed. And yet he could not h