hat I was conducting myself with
credit, I had no doubt. My father could not have accepted the
Professor's charge more confidently than I, nor could he have used more
adroitness in persuading Penelope to leave the clearing. So I was sure
of commendation when I brought her home. Home was such a bountiful
place. My mother had impressed that on me very often. She had laid
emphasis on my obligation to share my riches with others--generally
when I had to carry heavy baskets down to the parsonage. To-day I was
mindful of that injunction, and to take care of Penelope was a pleasant
task, since for the present it meant simply to share with her from an
inexhaustible store. Considering the future, I wandered into hazy and
very muddled dreams. Did the Professor never return, I was quite
willing to keep my promise and to care for his daughter always. This
did not mean that I was contemplating matrimony at some remote time.
Matrimony, to my youthful observation, was a prosaic state. It did not
seem to me that my father and mother led an interesting life. If they
were happy in it, then it was in a very strange way, for they only knew
a dull routine of work and worry. Sometimes they laughed, and when
they did it was hard to discover the sources of their mirth. How my
father could find pleasure in Mr. Pound's sermons was a mystery, and
when my mother declared that the meeting of the Ladies' Aid had been
most enjoyable I was sure that she was pretending. No; the future held
something better for me than such dull days. Somehow, somewhere, when
I became a man I should live days like this day, I should live as now I
rode, with every sense keyed to the joy of living, and Penelope's arms
would encircle me and the blue ribbon would gently brush my neck.

These pleasant dreams were disturbed by realities. I had come to one
of those dreadful moments when danger rises like an appalling cloud,
through which we can see no gleam of light beyond. This cloud, "at
first no larger than a man's hand," arose from a fence in the person of
Piney Savercool. I saw him with pleasure, for I knew that I was coming
to familiar roads, and then he was such a very small boy that I had not
that sense of humiliation which I must have felt had one of my own age
seen me riding with a girl.

"Morning, Piney," I said grandly.

For an answer Piney simply opened his mouth very wide, and his eyes
started from his head.

My effect upon him was very plea