g-on lonely." A very little of the ridge road
sufficed to make Bruce sick for comradeship, and his voice showed it.
The boy turned an impressionable, sympathetic face.

"Come rat along," he said. He looked at Bruce a moment questioningly
before adding, "Reckin's haow you aint usen to the quiet yit. Taint so
lonely, the woods an' the hills whend you know um." He twisted his head
like a bird and looked out across the extensive sweep of the land and
the long slow curve of the river, a deep inspiration swelling his chest.
"Simlike they up an' talk to you, the woods an' the hills an' the quiet,
whend you know um," he said.

All on the instant Steering knew that, as in the case of Old Bernique,
here again was character. "Character" seemed distinctly the richest and
the pleasantest thing in Missouri. He rode in a little closer to his
companion, drawn to him irresistibly, recognising in him the sweet,
untutored poetry of a wildwood nature, whose young timidity was
trembling and steadying into the placating, magnetic assurance of a boy,
fresh-hearted as a berry. Steering had encountered the same sort of
poetry in other unspoiled boys, splendid child-men whom he had known in
other walks of life, and he had a quick affection for it. It was always
as though on its crystal clearness a man might see the white sails of
his own youth set back toward him.

"Yes," he answered, "I think you are right about that. They do talk, the
hills and the woods and the quiet,--only a fellow grows dull, gets his
ears full of electric gongs and push-bells, and forgets to listen."

The boy looked up with quick-witted question. "Y'aint f'm this part of
the kentry, air you?" he asked.

"No. I am from--well, from Bessietown last. Where are you from?"

The boy laughed and glanced gaily at his briar-torn clothes. "F'm the
woods," he said.

"My name is Bruce Steering."

"Mine's Piney."

They fell then to talking of many things, as they rode toward Poetical,
but inevitably they spoke chiefly of the great State of Missouri. On the
subject of Missouri the boy talked, as old Bernique had talked, with
expansive naivete. In his roamings he had ridden the State up and down,
and had found much to love in it. "You'll like her, too, all righty," he
told Bruce confidently, "whend you git broke to her." On one of youth's
candid impulses to speak up for the life on the inside, the cherished
desire, the gallant ideal, the buoyant fancy, he made a supple, sudden