the black-haired,
blue-eyed big boy who rollicked on the floor with or danced him on his
knee to--

This is the way the lady rides!
Tritty-trot-trot; tritty-trot-trot!

Or who, returning from school and meeting his faltering feet in the
lane, would toss him up on his shoulder and canter him home with mad,
merry scamperings.

Not that school and Nat ever had much in common. Even as a little shaver
Luke had realized that. Nat was the family wilding, the migratory bird
that yearned for other climes. There were the times when he sulked long
days by the fire, and the springs and autumns when he played an unending
round of hookey. There were the days when he was sent home from school
in disgrace; when protesting notes, and sometimes even teacher, arrived.

"It's not that Nat's a bad boy, Mrs. Haynes," he remembered one teacher
saying; "but he's so active, so full of restless animal spirits. How are
we ever going to tame him?"

Maw didn't know the answer--that was sure. She loved Nat best--Luke had
guessed it long ago, by the tone of her voice when she spoke to him, by
the touch of her hand on his head, or the size of his apple turnover, so
much bigger than the others'. Maw must have built heavily on her hopes
of Nat those days--her one perfect child. She was so proud of him! In
the face of all ominous prediction she would fling her head high.

"My Nat's a Peel!" she would say. "Can't never tell how he'll turn out."

The farmers thereabouts thought they could tell her. Nat was into one
scrape after another--nothing especially wicked; but a compound of the
bubbling mischief in a too ardent life--robbed orchards, broken windows,
practical jokes, Halloween jinks, vagrant whimsies of an active
imagination.

It was just that Nat's quarters were too small for him, chiefly. Even he
realized this presently. Luke would never forget the sloppy March
morning when Nat went away. He was wakened by a flare of candle in the
room he shared with his brothers. Tom, the twelve-year-old, lay sound
asleep; but Nat, the big man of fifteen, was up, dressed, bending over
something he was writing on a paper at the bureau. There was a fat
little bundle beside him, done up in a blue-and-white bandanna.

Day was still far off. The window showed black; there was the sound of a
thaw running off the eaves; the white-washed wall was painted with
grotesque leaping shadows by the candle flame. At the first murmur, Nat
had come and put his ar