a language which no creature of the earth has learned
enough of happiness to translate.

But the precepts which prevailed in the little school-house were to the
effect that rivers, except as they flowed as they listed to confusing
points of the compass, rising among names difficult to remember, and
emptying into the least anticipated body of water, were chiefly to be
avoided for their proclivity to drown small boys intent on swimming or
angling. Mountains, aside from the desirability of their recognition as
forming one of the divisions of land somewhat easily distinguishable
by the more erudite youth from plains, valleys, and capes, were full
of crags and chasms, rattlesnakes and vegetable poisons, and a further
familiarity with them was liable to result in the total loss of the
adventurous--to see friends, family, and home no more.

These dicta, promulgated from the professorial chair, served to keep
the small body of callow humanity, with whose instruction Abner Sage was
intrusted by the State, well within call and out of harm's way during
the short recesses, while under his guidance they toddled along the
rough road that leads up the steeps to knowledge. But one there was
who either bore a charmed life or possessed an unequalled craft in
successfully defying danger; who fished and swam with impunity; who was
ragged and torn from much climbing of crags; whose freckled face bore
frequent red tokens of an indiscriminate sampling of berries. It is too
much to say that Abner Sage would have been glad to have his warnings
made terrible by some bodily disaster to the juvenile dare-devil of the
school, but Leander Yerby's disobedient incredulity as to the terrors
that menaced him, and his triumphant immunity, fostered a certain grudge
against him. Covert though it was, unrecognized even by Sage himself,
it was very definitely apparent to Tyler Sudley when sometimes, often,
indeed, on his way home from hunting, he would pause at the school-house
window, pulling open the shutter from the outside, and gravely watch his
protege, who stood spelling at the head of the class.

For Leander Yerby's exploits were not altogether those of a physical
prowess. He was a mighty wrestler with the multiplication table. He
had met and overthrown the nine line in single-handed combat. He had
attained unto some interesting knowledge of the earth on which he lived,
and could fluently bound countries with neatness and precision, and was
on term