nly defense.

"About two miles into the wood, my fierce-looking friends, after some
exchange of understanding as to their respective ways and meeting-point,
started off on different sides of the road in search of game, as they
said, but, as I feared, with the purpose of robbing and perhaps
murdering me at some darker spot in the forest. I had gone perhaps two
miles farther, when I heard the breaking of a twig, and, looking on one
side, saw a hand signaling me to stop. Presently an eye came out behind
the tree, and then an arm, and I verily thought my hour had come. But,
keeping straight on, I perceived, almost instantly, to my great relief,
two fine deer, who appeared not at all disturbed by a man on horseback,
though ready enough to fly from a gun, and began to suspect that the
robber I was dreading was, after all, only a hunter in the honest
pursuit of his living. The crack of the rifle soon proved that the deer,
and not my saddle-bags, were the game aimed at, and I found my
imagination had for twelve hours been converting very harmless huntsmen
into highwaymen of a most malicious aspect."

His employer was so well pleased with the success of his young collector
that he offered to give him a place in the factory, saying there would
always be plenty of rough work at which an inexperienced hand could
employ himself. "I could refuse no proposition that promised me bread
and clothes," said he, "for I was often walking the streets hungry, with
my arms pressed close to my sides to conceal the holes in my coat
sleeves." His first task was to thin down with a file some brass plates
which were to be used as parts of the stops of an organ. Powers was
expected to do merely the rough work, after which the plates were to
pass into the hands of the regular finisher. His employer, knowing that
the task was one which would require time, told him he would look in in
a few days, and see how he had succeeded. The young man's mechanical
talent, on which he had prided himself when a boy in Vermont, now did
him good service, and he applied himself to his task with skill and
determination. When his employer asked for the plates, he was astonished
to find that Powers had not only done the rough work, but had finished
them much better than the regular finisher had ever done, and this
merely by his greater nicety of eye and his undaunted energy. He had
blistered his hands terribly, but had done his work well. His employer
was delighted, and,