y civilization cry out
for the strong meat of the jungle--for the scent of the raw, dark earth
and for the gleam of the yellow moonlight on the wet, rustling leaves.
This longing may come but once in adolescence, or many times until
the frost of age has withered the senses. It may come amid the showery
warmth and the roving fragrance of an April day, or beside the shining,
brown, leaf-strewn brooks of November. But let it come to a man when
it will, and that man renounces, in spite of himself, his little leaden
gods of prosperity, and in his heart, beneath the woven garment of
custom, he exchanges his birthright of respectability for a mess of
Romany pottage. Under the luminous sweep and rush of this vision, Abel
laughed suddenly at the thought of his marriage to Judy. Obstacles which
had appeared insurmountable at sunrise, showed now as unsubstantial and
evanescent as shadows.

"I won't go back!" he repeated exultantly, "I won't go back!"

"You're talkin' to yo'self, mister," said a voice at his side, and
looking down he saw a small barefooted boy, in overalls, with a bag of
striped purple calico hanging from one shoulder.

"You've been talkin' to yo'self all along the road," the boy repeated
with zest.

"Have I? What are you up to?"

"I've been chinquapinin'. Ma, she thinks I'm at school, but I ain't."
He looked up wickedly, bubbling over with the shameless joys of truancy.
"Thar's a lot of chinquapin bushes over yonder in Cobblestone's wood an'
they're chock full of nuts."

"And they're in your bag now, I suppose?"

"I've got a peck of 'em, an' I'm goin' to make me a chain as long
as--that. It'll be a watch chain, an' I've made a watch out of a walnut.
It can't keep time, of course," he added, "'cep'n for that it's really a
sho' nough watch." His small freckled face, overhung by a mat of carroty
hair, was wreathed in a contagious, an intoxicating smile--the smile of
one who has bought happiness at the price of duty, and whose enjoyment
is sweetened by the secret knowledge that he has successfully eluded the
Stern Daughter of the Voice of God. Instinctively, Abel was aware that
the savour was not in the chinquapins, but in the disobedience, and his
heart warmed to the boy with the freckled face.

"Are you going home now?" he asked.

"You bet I ain't. I've got my snack ma fixed for me." He unrolled a
brown paper package and revealed two thin slices of bread with a fishing
hook stuck in one corner. "Thar's ap