n, Minnesota. Poplar becomes dry and dusty,
and the bark turns to a monstrously mottled and evil greenish-white.
Carl announced to one poplar stick, "I could lick you! I'm a gen'ral,
I am." The stick made no reply whatever, and he contemptuously shied
it out into the chickweed which matted the grubby back yard. This
necessitated his sneaking out and capturing it by stalking it from the
rear, lest it rouse the Popple Army.

He loitered outside the shed, sniffing at the smoke from burning
leaves--the scent of autumn and migration and wanderlust. He glanced
down between houses to the reedy shore of Joralemon Lake. The surface
of the water was smooth, and tinted like a bluebell, save for one
patch in the current where wavelets leaped with October madness in
sparkles of diamond fire. Across the lake, woods sprinkled with
gold-dust and paprika broke the sweep of sparse yellow stubble, and a
red barn was softly brilliant in the caressing sunlight and lively air
of the Minnesota prairie. Over there was the field of valor, where
grown-up men with shiny shotguns went hunting prairie-chickens; the
Great World, leading clear to the Red River Valley and Canada.

Three mallard-ducks, with necks far out and wings beating hurriedly,
shot over Carl's head. From far off a gun-shot floated echoing through
forest hollows; in the waiting stillness sounded a rooster's crow,
distant, magical.

"I want to go hunting!" mourned Carl, as he trailed back into the
woodshed. It seemed darker than ever and smelled of moldy chips. He
bounced like an enraged chipmunk. His phlegmatic china-blue eyes
filmed with tears. "Won't pile no more wood!" he declared.

Naughty he undoubtedly was. But since he knew that his father, Oscar
Ericson, the carpenter, all knuckles and patched overalls and bad
temper, would probably whip him for rebellion, he may have acquired
merit. He did not even look toward the house to see whether his mother
was watching him--his farm-bred, worried, kindly, small, flat-chested,
pinch-nosed, bleached, twangy-voiced, plucky Norwegian mother. He
marched to the workshop and brought a collection of miscellaneous
nails and screws out to a bare patch of earth in front of the
chicken-yard. They were the Nail People, the most reckless band of
mercenaries the world has ever known, led by old General Door-Hinge,
who was somewhat inclined to collapse in the middle, but possessed of
the unusual virtue of eyes in both ends of him. He had explor