, his mind
far away, mounted and rode off without once remembering the little boy,
and in the course of the afternoon arrived at his brother-in-law's farm.
Then he was confronted by Jane Clemens, who demanded Little Sam.

"Why," said the judge, aghast, "I never once thought of him after I left
him asleep."

Wharton Lampton, a brother of Jane Clemens and Patsey Quarles, hastily
saddled a horse and set out, helter-skelter, for Hannibal. He arrived
in the early dusk. The child was safe enough, but he was crying with
loneliness and hunger. He had spent most of the day in the locked,
deserted house playing with a hole in the meal-sack where the meal
ran out, when properly encouraged, in a tiny stream. He was fed and
comforted, and next day was safe on the farm, which during that summer
and those that followed it, became so large a part of his boyhood and
lent a coloring to his later years.

VIII. THE FARM

We have already mentioned the delight of the Clemens children in Uncle
John Quarles's farm. To Little Sam it was probably a life-saver. With
his small cousin, Tabitha,--[Tabitha Quarles, now Mrs. Greening,
of Palmyra, Missouri, has supplied most of the material for this
chapter.]--just his own age (they called her Puss), he wandered over
that magic domain, fording new marvels at every step, new delights
everywhere. A slave-girl, Mary, usually attended them, but she was only
six years older, and not older at all in reality, so she was just a
playmate, and not a guardian to be feared or evaded. Sometimes, indeed,
it was necessary for her to threaten to tell "Miss Patsey" or "Miss
Jane," when her little charges insisted on going farther or staying
later than she thought wise from the viewpoint of her own personal
safety; but this was seldom, and on the whole a stay at the farm was
just one long idyllic dream of summer-time and freedom.

The farm-house stood in the middle of a large yard entered by a stile
made of sawed-off logs of graduated heights. In the corner of the yard
were hickory trees, and black walnut, and beyond the fence the hill fell
away past the barns, the corn-cribs, and the tobacco-house to a brook--a
divine place to wade, with deep, dark, forbidden pools. Down in the
pasture there were swings under the big trees, and Mary swung the
children and ran under them until their feet touched the branches, and
then took her turn and "balanced" herself so high that their one wish
was to be as old as Mary a