familiar faces, and hear the applause at his witty
satires and his praise of the nobility of the farmer's life, and it
would be sweet indeed to have the country people grasp him by the hand
and call him Phil, just as they used to before he was famous. What he
would say, he was not thinking of, but the position he would occupy
before the audience. There were no misgivings in any of these dreams of
youth.

II

The musings of this dreamer in a tree-top were interrupted by the
peremptory notes of a tin horn from the farmhouse below. The boy
recognized this not only as a signal of declining day and the
withdrawal of the sun behind the mountains, but as a personal and urgent
notification to him that a certain amount of disenchanting drudgery
called chores lay between him and supper and the lamp-illumined pages of
The Last of the Mohicans. It was difficult, even in his own estimation,
to continue to be a hero at the summons of a tin horn--a silver clarion
and castle walls would have been so different--and Phil slid swiftly
down from his perch, envying the squirrels who were under no such
bondage of duty.

Recalled to the world that now is, the lad hastily gathered a bouquet
of columbine and a bunch of the tender leaves and the red berries of the
wintergreen, called to "Turk," who had been all these hours watching a
woodchuck hole, and ran down the hill by leaps and circuits as fast as
his little legs could carry him, and, with every appearance of a lad who
puts duty before pleasure, arrived breathless at the kitchen door, where
Alice stood waiting for him. Alice, the somewhat feeble performer on the
horn, who had been watching for the boy with her hand shading her eyes,
called out upon his approach:

"Why, Phil, what in the world--"

"Oh, Alice!" cried the boy, eagerly, having in a moment changed in
his mind the destination of the flowers; "I've found a place where the
checker-berries are thick as spatter." And Phil put the flowers and the
berries in his cousin's hand. Alice looked very much pleased with this
simple tribute, but, as she admired it, unfortunately asked--women
always ask such questions:

"And you picked them for me?"

This was a cruel dilemma. Phil was more devoted to his sweet cousin than
to any one else in the world, and he didn't want to hurt her feelings,
and he hated to tell a lie. So he only looked a lie, out of his
affectionate, truthful eyes, and said:

"I love to bring you flowers. Has