rning
mail, and gained thereby a queer negative enjoyment of a perfectly
useless duty performed. Johnny watched his uncle draw near to the house,
and cruelly reflected how unlike Robin Hood he must be. He even
wondered if his uncle could possibly have read Robin Hood and still show
absolutely no result in his own personal appearance. He knew that
he, Johnny, could not walk to the post-office and back, even with the
drawback of a dripping old umbrella instead of a bow and arrow, without
looking a bit like Robin Hood, especially when fresh from reading about
him.

Then suddenly something distracted his thoughts from Uncle Jonathan. The
long, feathery grass in the field moved with a motion distinct from
that caused by the wind and rain. Johnny saw a tiger-striped back emerge,
covering long leaps of terror. Johnny knew the creature for a cat afraid
of Uncle Jonathan. Then he saw the grass move behind the first leaping,
striped back, and he knew there were more cats afraid of Uncle Jonathan.
There were even motions caused by unseen things, and he reasoned,
"Kittens afraid of Uncle Jonathan." Then Johnny reflected with a great
glow of indignation that the Simmonses kept an outrageous number of
half-starved cats and kittens, besides a quota of children popularly
supposed to be none too well nourished, let alone properly clothed. Then
it was that Johnny Trumbull's active, firm imagination slapped the past
of old romance like a most thorough mustard poultice over the present.
There could be no Lincoln Green, no following of brave outlaws (that
is, in the strictest sense), no bows and arrows, no sojourning under
greenwood trees and the rest, but something he could, and would, do and
be. That rainy day when Johnny Trumbull was a good boy, and stayed in
the house, and read a book, marked an epoch.

That night when Johnny went into his aunt Janet's room she looked
curiously at his face, which seemed a little strange to her. Johnny,
since he had come into possession of his grandfather's watch, went every
night, on his way to bed, to his aunt's room for the purpose of winding
up that ancient timepiece, Janet having a firm impression that it might
not be done properly unless under her supervision. Johnny stood before
his aunt and wound up the watch with its ponderous key, and she watched
him.

"What have you been doing all day, John?" said she.

"Stayed in the house and--read."

"What did you read, John?"

"A book."

"Do you