on his trousers and
shirt. A feverish desire to get out of doors took
possession of him. Every morning he made such a noise
coming down stairs that Aunt Callie, the housekeeper,
declared he was trying to tear the house down. When he
had run through the long old house, shutting the doors
behind him with a bang, he came into the barnyard and
looked about with an amazed air of expectancy. It
seemed to him that in such a place tremendous things
might have happened during the night. The farm hands
looked at him and laughed. Henry Strader, an old man
who had been on the farm since Jesse came into
possession and who before David's time had never been
known to make a joke, made the same joke every morning.
It amused David so that he laughed and clapped his
hands. "See, come here and look," cried the old man.
"Grandfather Jesse's white mare has torn the black
stocking she wears on her foot."

Day after day through the long summer, Jesse Bentley
drove from farm to farm up and down the valley of Wine
Creek, and his grandson went with him. They rode in a
comfortable old phaeton drawn by the white horse. The
old man scratched his thin white beard and talked to
himself of his plans for increasing the productiveness
of the fields they visited and of God's part in the
plans all men made. Sometimes he looked at David and
smiled happily and then for a long time he appeared to
forget the boy's existence. More and more every day now
his mind turned back again to the dreams that had
filled his mind when he had first come out of the city
to live on the land. One afternoon he startled David by
letting his dreams take entire possession of him. With
the boy as a witness, he went through a ceremony and
brought about an accident that nearly destroyed the
companionship that was growing up between them.

Jesse and his grandson were driving in a distant part
of the valley some miles from home. A forest came down
to the road and through the forest Wine Creek wriggled
its way over stones toward a distant river. All the
afternoon Jesse had been in a meditative mood and now
he began to talk. His mind went back to the night when
he had been frightened by thoughts of a giant that
might come to rob and plunder him of his possessions,
and again as on that night when he had run through the
fields crying for a son, he became excited to the edge
of insanity. Stopping the horse he got out of the buggy
and asked David to get out also. The two climbed