n the one
year Jesse made enough money to pay for all the cost of
preparing the land and had a surplus that enabled him
to buy two more farms. He was exultant and could not
conceal his delight. For the first time in all the
history of his ownership of the farms, he went among
his men with a smiling face.

Jesse bought a great many new machines for cutting down
the cost of labor and all of the remaining acres in the
strip of black fertile swamp land. One day he went into
Winesburg and bought a bicycle and a new suit of
clothes for David and he gave his two sisters money
with which to go to a religious convention at
Cleveland, Ohio.

In the fall of that year when the frost came and the
trees in the forests along Wine Creek were golden
brown, David spent every moment when he did not have to
attend school, out in the open. Alone or with other
boys he went every afternoon into the woods to gather
nuts. The other boys of the countryside, most of them
sons of laborers on the Bentley farms, had guns with
which they went hunting rabbits and squirrels, but
David did not go with them. He made himself a sling
with rubber bands and a forked stick and went off by
himself to gather nuts. As he went about thoughts came
to him. He realized that he was almost a man and
wondered what he would do in life, but before they came
to anything, the thoughts passed and he was a boy
again. One day he killed a squirrel that sat on one of
the lower branches of a tree and chattered at him. Home
he ran with the squirrel in his hand. One of the
Bentley sisters cooked the little animal and he ate it
with great gusto. The skin he tacked on a board and
suspended the board by a string from his bedroom
window.

That gave his mind a new turn. After that he never
went into the woods without carrying the sling in his
pocket and he spent hours shooting at imaginary animals
concealed among the brown leaves in the trees. Thoughts
of his coming manhood passed and he was content to be a
boy with a boy's impulses.

One Saturday morning when he was about to set off for
the woods with the sling in his pocket and a bag for
nuts on his shoulder, his grandfather stopped him. In
the eyes of the old man was the strained serious look
that always a little frightened David. At such times
Jesse Bentley's eyes did not look straight ahead but
wavered and seemed to be looking at nothing. Something
like an invisible curtain appeared to have come between
the man and