ave a last look at his chickens."

We sit down to dinner, but Mansie does n't come. The wind whistles
outside, the snow sweeps up against the windows,--the night grows
wilder and fiercer.

"Why doesn't Mansie come?" his mother asks, looking at me.

"Oh, he can't shut the hen-house doors, for the snow. He 'll be here
in a moment."

The meal goes on.

"Will you go out and see what is the matter with the child?" she asks,
the look of anxiety changing to one of alarm on her face.

As I am rising there is a racket in the cellar and the child soon comes
blinking into the lighted dining-room, his hair dusty with snow, his
cheeks blazing, his eyes afire. He slips into his place with just a
hint of apology about him and reaches for his cup of fresh, warm milk.

He is twelve years old.

"What does this mean, Mansie?" she says.

"Nothing."

"You are late for dinner. And who knows what had happened to you out
there in the trees a night like this. What were you doing?"

"Shutting up the chickens."

"But you did shut them up early in the afternoon."

"Yes, mother."

"Well?"

"It's awful cold, mother!"

"Yes?"

"They might freeze!"

"Yes?"

"Specially those little ones."

"Yes, I know, but what took you so long?"

"I did n't want 'em to freeze."

"Yes?"

"So I took a little one and put it on the roost in between two big
hens--a little one and a big one, a little one and a big one, to keep
the little ones warm; and it took a lot of time."

"Will you have another cup of warm milk?" she asks, pouring him more
from the pitcher, doing very well with her lips and eyes, it seemed to
me, considering how she ran the cup over.

Shall I take them back to the city for the winter--away from their
chickens, and cow and dog and pig and work-bench and haymow and
fireside, and the open air and their wild neighbors and the wilder
nights that I remember as a child?

"There it a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea--and music in its roar."

Once they have known all of this I can take them into town and not
spoil the poet in them.

"Make our boy interested in natural history if you can. It is better
than games. Keep him in the open air. Above all, you must guard him
against indolence. Make him a strenuous man. The great God has called
me. Take comfort in that I die in peace with the world and myself and