rt to do
the actual hauling.

By this time Willard was quite familiar with the management of horses,
and he had also learned to drive oxen, so that at the age of thirteen he
worked with his ox-team as regularly and almost as efficiently as any of
his grown-up uncles or even his father. The management of an ox-team, by
the way, is quite different from that of horses, and at times it becomes
very troublesome business, requiring for its successful accomplishment
the very nicest admixture of courage, coolness and discretion. Willard,
however, with the self-reliance that always characterizes a boy of his
age, never for a moment doubted that he was adequate to the task, and as
he had been placed in charge of a very fine yoke of oxen, took much
pride in driving them in the same manner as he would have driven a span
of horses, seated on the top of his load upon the wagon instead of being
on foot and close by their heads, as prudence would have taught an
older driver to do. The truth is, that if there was any human being
before whom the boy delighted to exhibit himself as doing a manly part
in his little circle of existence, that being was Henry Glazier.

Consequently, when his uncle's team was on the road, Master Willard took
a position upon his own load with as important an air as if he were on
the box of a coach-and-four, and guided his cattle as if they were
animals of the most docile disposition, to halt at his whisper or
proceed at his word. As the principal part of the work was performed at
midsummer under the rays of a scorching sun, the cattle were, of course,
irritable and restive to a degree that in colder weather would have
seemed inconsistent with the phlegmatic characteristics of their race.

The road from Little York to Fullerville is a winding, narrow road,
somewhat hilly in places, and neither very smooth nor level at any
point. Midway between the two villages a brawling stream crosses the
road, and making a turn empties itself, at the distance of about thirty
yards, into the waters of the Oswegatchie. This stream is spanned by a
rustic bridge at a very considerable elevation above the water. The
banks are high and abrupt, and, as the traveler approaches them, he
cannot fail to be attracted by the silvery sparkle of the waters far
below. The view from the bridge takes in the white farm-houses with
their emerald setting of rich grain-fields and meadowlands, the distant
forge with its belching smoke-stacks, the