way o' city folks, mother,' said David.

'It's a bad way,' she answered. 'I do not thank he ought to come here.
Hope's a child yet, and we mustn't let her get notions.'

'I'll tell him not t' come any more,' said David, as he and Uncle Eb
rose to go to their work.'

'I'm 'fraid she ought not to go away to school for a year yet,' said
Elizabeth, a troubled look in her face.

'Pshaw, mother! Ye can't keep her under yer wing alwus,' said he. 'Well,
David, you know she is very young and uncommonly--' she hesitated.

'Han'some,' said he, 'we might as well own up if she is our child.'

'If she goes away,' continued Elizabeth, 'some of us ought t' go with
her.'

Then Uncle Eb and David went to their work in the fields and I to my own
task That very evening they began to talk of renting the farm and going
to town with the children.

I had a stent of cording wood that day and finished it before two
o'clock Then I got my pole of mountain ash, made hook and line ready,
dug some worms and went fishing. I cared not so much for the fishing as
for the solitude of the woods. I had a bit of thing to do. In the thick
timber there was a place where Tinkle brook began to hurry and break
into murmurs on a pebble bar, as if its feet were tickled. A few more
steps and it burst into a peal of laughter that lasted half the year as
it tumbled over narrow shelves of rock into a foamy pool. Many a day I
had sat fishing for hours at the little fall under a birch tree, among
the brakes and moss. No ray of sunlight ever got to the dark water below
me--the lair of many a big fish that had yielded to the temptation of
my bait. Here I lay in the cool shade while a singular sort of heart
sickness came over me. A wild partridge was beating his gong in the near
woods all the afternoon. The sound of the water seemed to break in the
tree-tops and fall back upon me. I had lain there thinking an hour or
more when I caught the jar of approaching footsteps. Looking up I saw
Jed Feary coming through the bushes, pole in hand.

'Fishin'?' he asked.

'Only thinking,' I answered.

'Couldn't be in better business,' said he as he sat down beside me.

More than once he had been my father confessor and I was glad he had
come.

'In love?' he asked. 'No boy ever thinks unless he's in love.'

'In trouble,' said I.

'Same thing,' he answered, lighting his pipe. 'Love is trouble with
a bit of sugar in it--the sweetest trouble a man can have. What's the
mat