eping there,
might be roused, and gazed around with astonished eyes.

How had the boy conceived it? What a picture he had wrought in living
colors! He had the heart of a painter. He had the soul of a poet. The
Boss stepped carefully over the velvet carpet to touch the walls of
crisp verdure with gentle fingers. He stood long beside the flower
bed, and gazed at the banked wall of bright bloom as if he doubted its
reality.

Where had Freckles ever found, and how had he transplanted such ferns?
As McLean turned from them he stopped suddenly.

He had reached the door of the cathedral. That which Freckles had
attempted would have been patent to anyone. What had been in the heart
of the shy, silent boy when he had found that long, dim stretch of
forest, decorated its entrance, cleared and smoothed its aisle, and
carpeted its altar? What veriest work of God was in these mighty living
pillars and the arched dome of green! How similar to stained cathedral
windows were the long openings between the trees, filled with rifts of
blue, rays of gold, and the shifting emerald of leaves! Where could be
found mosaics to match this aisle paved with living color and glowing
light? Was Freckles a devout Christian, and did he worship here? Or was
he an untaught heathen, and down this vista of entrancing loveliness did
Pan come piping, and dryads, nymphs, and fairies dance for him?

Who can fathom the heart of a boy? McLean had been thinking of Freckles
as a creature of unswerving honesty, courage, and faithfulness. Here was
evidence of a heart aching for beauty, art, companionship, worship. It
was writ large all over the floor, walls, and furnishing of that little
Limberlost clearing.

When Duncan came, McLean told him the story of the fight, and they
laughed until they cried. Then they started around the line in search of
the tree.

Said Duncan: "Now the boy is in for sore trouble!"

"I hope not," answered McLean. "You never in all your life saw a cur
whipped so completely. He won't come back for the repetition of the
chorus. We surely can find the tree. If we can't, Freckles can. I will
bring enough of the gang to take it out at once. That will insure peace
for a time, at least, and I am hoping that in a month more the whole
gang may be moved here. It soon will be fall, and then, if he will go, I
intend to send Freckles to my mother to be educated. With his quickness
of mind and body and a few years' good help he can do anything. W