334
CHAPTER XXV 339
CHAPTER XXVI 355
CHAPTER XXVII 365
CHAPTER XXVIII 382
CHAPTER XXIX 405
CHAPTER XXX 428

BOOK I

A CERTAIN RICH MAN

CHAPTER I

The woods were as the Indians had left them, but the boys who were
playing there did not realize, until many years afterwards, that they
had moved in as the Indians moved out. Perhaps, if these boys had
known that they were the first white boys to use the Indians'
playgrounds, the realization might have added zest to the make-believe
of their games; but probably boys between seven and fourteen, when
they play at all, play with their fancies strained, and very likely
these little boys, keeping their stick-horse livery-stable in a
wild-grape arbour in the thicket, needed no verisimilitude. The long
straight hickory switches--which served as horses--were arranged
with their butts on a rotting log, whereon some grass was spread for
their feed. Their string bridles hung loosely over the log. The
horsemen swinging in the vines above, or in the elm tree near by, were
preparing a raid on the stables of other boys, either in the native
lumber town a rifle-shot away or in distant parts of the woods. When
the youngsters climbed down, they straddled their hickory steeds and
galloped friskily away to the creek and drank; this was part of the
rites, for tradition in the town of their elders said that whoever
drank of Sycamore Creek water immediately turned horse thief. Having
drunk their fill at the ford, they waded it and left the stumpy road,
plunging into the underbrush, snorting and puffing and giggling and
fussing and complaining--the big ones at the little ones and the
little ones at the big ones--after the manner of mankind.

When they had gone perhaps a half-mile from the ford, one of the
little boys, feeling the rag on his sore heel slipping and letting the
rough woods grass scratch his raw flesh, stopped to tie up the rag. He
was far in the rear of the pack when he stopped, and the boys, not
heeding his blat, rushed on and left him at the edge of a thicket near
a deep-rutted road. His cry became a whimper and his whimper a sniffle
as he worked with the rag; but the little fingers were clumsy, and a
heel is a hard place to cover, and