nate hatred of the work which he might not neglect.
His father had never tried to beat against the barriers of his ignorance
and been driven back, and beat again and wept, and read what he couldn't
understand. The teacher at the public school had told him that he was
far ahead of his years, and yet they had taken him away when he was
doing his level best, and put him to dragging the land, and gathering
the peanuts, and carrying the truck to market, and marking the sheep
with red paint, and bringing up the cows, and doing all the odd,
innumerable jobs they could devise. He let the ropes fall for an instant
and dug his fist into his eye; then he took them up again and went on
stolidly. At last the sun came out boldly above the hill, and the
hollows were flooded with light. In the centre of the field the boy's
head glowed like some large red insect. A hawk, winging slowly above
him, looked down as if uncertain of his species, and fluttered off
indifferently.

At six o'clock his stepmother came to the back door and called him to
breakfast.

When the meal was over Amos Burr went out to the field, and Nicholas was
sent to drive the sheep to the pasture. With vigorous wavings of a piece
of brushwood, and many darts from right to left, he succeeded finally in
driving them across the road and through the gate on the opposite side,
after which he returned to assist his stepmother about the house. Not
until nine o'clock, when he had seen the Battle children going up the
road, was he free to set off at a run for Kingsborough.

As he sped breathlessly along, past the wastelands, into the woods, down
the road to the hillside, and down the hillside to the road again, he
went too rapidly for thought. The fresh air brushed his heated face
gently, and, at the edge of the wood, where the shallow puddles
lingered, myriads of blue and yellow butterflies scattered into
variegated clumps of colour at his approach, darting from the moist
heaps of last year's leaves to the shining rivulets in the wheel ruts by
the way. A partridge whistled from the yellowing green of the wheat, and
a rabbit stole noiselessly from the sassafras in the ditch and shot shy
glances of alarm; but he did not turn his head, and his hand held no
ready stone.

Though he had run half the way, when at last he reached the judge's
house, and stood before the little office in the garden where the school
was held, his courage misgave him, and he leaned, trembling, against