Forester asked him how he had got along the
day before. Marco had the frankness to admit that he did not get along
very well.

"Still," said Forester, "I am well satisfied on the whole. You did
very well for a first experiment. In the first place, you did really
make some effort to carry out my plan. You kept the reckoning of the
hours, and changed your studies at the appointed time. You did not
speak to me more than three or four times, and then you acquiesced
pretty good-naturedly in my refusing to help you. To-day you will do
better, I have no doubt, and to-morrow better still. And thus, in the
course of a week, I have great confidence that you will learn to study
for three hours by yourself, to good advantage."

"Two hours and a half it is," said Marco.

"Yes," said Forester.

It resulted as Forester predicted. Marco, finding that Forester was
disposed to be pleased with and to commend his efforts, made greater
efforts every day, and, in the course of a week, he began to be a
very respectable student. In the afternoon he used to ramble about,
sometimes with Forester, and sometimes alone. He was very fond of
fishing, and Forester used to allow him to go to certain parts of the
river, where the water was not deep, alone, trusting to his word that
he would confine himself strictly to the prescribed bounds.

Chapter VI.

The Log Canoe.

Every thing went on very prosperously, for a week or two, in the
little study. Marco became more and more attentive to his studies, and
more and more interested in them. He was often getting into little
difficulties, it is true, and giving trouble to his uncle and aunt;
but then he generally seemed sorry afterward for the trouble which he
had thus occasioned, and he bore reproof, and such punishments as his
cousin thought it necessary to inflict, with so much good-humor, that
they all readily forgave him for his faults and misdemeanors.

One day, however, about a fortnight after he had commenced his
studies, he got led away, through the influence of a peculiar
temptation, into a rather serious act of transgression, which might
have been followed by very grave consequences. The circumstances were
these. He had commenced his studies as usual, after having received
his half-hour's instruction from Forester, and was in the midst of the
process of reducing the fraction 504/756 to its lowest terms, when he
happened to look out of the window and to see two boys climbing over