out of the cold storage of a puritanic spirit, and
warmed it into new life and opened its door for me.

In the afternoon she sent me over to Wills' to borrow a little tea. I
stopped for a few minutes to play with Henry Wills--a boy not quite a
year older than I. While playing there I discovered a piece of the rind
of my melon in the dooryard. On that piece of rind I saw the cross which
I had made one day with my thumb-nail. It was intended to indicate that
the melon was solely and wholly mine. I felt a flush of anger.

"I hate you," I said as I approached him.

"I hate you," he answered.

"You're a snake!" I said.

We now stood, face to face and breast to breast, like a pair of young
roosters. He gave me a shove and told me to go home. I gave him a shove
and told him I wouldn't. I pushed up close to him again and we glared
into each other's eyes.

Suddenly he spat in my face. I gave him a scratch on the forehead with
my finger-nails. Then we fell upon each other and rolled on the ground
and hit and scratched with feline ferocity.

Mrs. Wills ran out of the house and parted us. Our blood was hot, and
leaking through the skin of our faces a little.

"He pitched on me," Henry explained.

I couldn't speak.

"Go right home--this minute--you brat!" said Mrs. Wills in anger.
"Here's your tea. Don't you ever come here again."

I took the tea and started down the road weeping. What a bitter day that
was for me! I dreaded to face my aunt and uncle. Coming through the
grove down by our gate I met Uncle Peabody. With the keen eyesight of
the father of the prodigal son he had seen me coming "a long way off"
and shouted:

"Well here ye be--I was kind o' worried, Bub."

Then his eye caught the look of dejection in my gait and figure. He
hurried toward me. He stopped as I came sobbing to his feet.

"Why, what's the matter?" he asked gently, as he took the tea cup from
my hand, and sat down upon his heels.

I could only fall into his arms and express myself in the grief of
childhood. He hugged me close and begged me to tell him what was the
matter.

"That Wills boy stole my melon," I said, and the words came slow with
sobs.

"Oh, no he didn't," said Uncle Peabody.

"Yes he did. I saw a piece o' the rin'."

"Well by--" said Uncle Peabody, stopping, as usual, at the edge of the
precipice.

"He's a snake," I added.

"And you fit and he scratched you up that way?"

"I scratched him, too."

"Don't you say a wo