illard.--Inseparable
companions.--Willard's early reading.--Favorite
authors.--Hero-worship of the first Napoleon and Charles XII. of
Sweden.--The genius of good and of evil.--Allen Wight.--A born
teacher.--Reverses of fortune.--The shadow on the
home.--Willard's resolve to seek his fortune and what came of
it.--The sleep under the trees.--The prodigal's return.--"All's
well that ends well."

Between Henry Glazier and young Willard a singular friendship had sprung
up. The great, six-foot uncle and the quaint, old-fashioned boy were
much together.

In the woods and fields, at junketings and corn-huskings, the pair were
often seen in grave converse, and while Willard was ever eager to hear
the stories of his uncle's mad adventures and queer scrapes, Henry
Glazier, in turn, would listen with a species of reverent wonder to the
boy's recital of striking passages of history or of fiction which he had
picked up in the course of a varied and desultory reading--a taste for
which was developed even at that early age. The volumes to which he had
access were few in number, but he had read their pages again and again,
and the subjects of which they treated were, for the most part, of just
such a character as were calculated to attract the attention of a youth
of action rather than of thought.

Among them were "Rollin's Ancient History," "Robinson Crusoe," "The
Arabian Nights," "Life of Charles XII. of Sweden," "Kossuth and his
Generals," and "Napoleon and his Marshals,"--everything relating to the
career of the great Corsican being devoured with the greatest avidity.

He began, of course, by reading the descriptions of battles. All boys do
so. But gradually his interest in such exciting events extended to the
actors in them, and again to the causes that led to them, and at length
the books were read from the preface to the end.

The conversations between the uncle and nephew were far from exercising
a good influence over the boy. If Willard related some daring deed from
the life of Charles XII. or of the great Napoleon--his own especial
hero--his uncle Henry would match it with some equally striking, if less
civilized adventure in the forest or upon the river, in which he or some
of his whilom associates had played the principal part. All this was, to
a certain extent, calculated to unsettle the lad's mind for the common,
routine duties of a useful existence. Fortunately, however, at about the
time