dreamed he was running away from the surgeon with the bloody knife in
his teeth and that the man was going to throw an arm at him. And when he
wished to bring Ellen Culpepper to time he would begin in a low
terrorful voice, "And I saw--the man--take--a--g-r-e-a-t l-o-n-g knife
d-r-i-p-p-i-n-g with r-e-d-b-l-o-o-d out of his t-e-e-t-h and go slish,
k-slish," but he never got farther than this, for the girl would begin
shaking, and if they were alone, would run to him and grab him and put
her hand to his mouth to make him stop.

And so his twelfth year passed under the open sky in the sunshine in
summer and in winter working after school in town where men were
wanting, and where a boy could always find work. He grew brown and
lean, and as his voice grew squeaky and he sang alto in the school, he
became more and more crafty and masterful. The fact that his mother
was the teacher, did not give him more rights in school than other
boys, for she was a sensible woman, but it gave him a prestige on the
playground that he was not slow to take. He was a born trader; and he
kept what he got and got more. His weakness was music. He kept two
cows in his herd in the summer time in return for the use of the
melodeon at the Thayer House, and moved it to his own home and put it
in the crowded little room, and practised on it at night when the
other boys were loafing at the town pump. For a consideration in
marbles he taught Buck Culpepper the chords in "G" on the guitar, and
for further consideration taught him the chords in "D" and "C," and
with the aid of Jimmy Fernald, aged nine, and Molly Culpepper, aged
eleven, one with a triangle and the other with a pumpkin reed pipe,
John organized his Band, which he led with his mouth-organ, and
exhibited in Culpepper's barn, appropriating to himself as the
director the pins charged at the door. Forty years afterward, when
Molly called his attention to his failure to divide with the children,
John Barclay smiled as he lifted his lame foot to a fat leather chair
in front of him and said, "That was what we call the promoter's
profit." And then the talk ran to Ellen, and John opened his great
desk and from a box without a mark on it he brought out a tintype
picture of Ellen at fourteen, a pink-cheeked child in short sleeves,
with the fringe of her pantalets showing above her red striped
stockings and beneath her bulging skirts, and with a stringy, stiff
feather rising from the front of her narrow