d there, gave
him a certain corner to take charge of, and keep in order."

"What was that boy's name?" asked Phonny.

"Why, I will call him Hazelnut," said Wallace.

"Ah!" exclaimed Phonny, "now I know you are going to tell some story
about me and Beechnut." Here Phonny threw back his head and laughed
aloud. He repeated the words Johnny and Hazelnut, and then laughed
again, until he made the woods ring with his merriment.

Wallace smiled, and went on with his story.

"Hazelnut gave him the charge of a corner of the barn where some
harnesses were kept, and Johnny's duty was to keep them in order
there. One day Hazelnut came home and found that Johnny had taken out
the long reins from the harness, and had fastened them to the branches
of two trees in the back yard, to make a swing, and then he had loaded
the swing with so many children, as to break it down."

"Yes," said Phonny, "that was me too; but I did not think that the
reins would break."

"I know it," said Wallace. "You did not think. That is the nature of
the kind of boyishness that I am speaking of. The boy does not
_think_. Men, generally, before they do any new or unusual thing, stop
to consider what the results and consequences of it are going to be;
but boys go on headlong, and find out what the consequences are when
they come."

While Wallace and Phonny had been conversing thus, they had been
riding through a wood which extended along a mountain glen. Just at
this time they came to a place where a cart path branched off from the
main road, toward the right. Phonny proposed to go into this path to
see where it would lead. Wallace had no objection to this plan, and so
they turned their horses and went in.

The cart path led them by a winding way through the woods for a short
distance, along a little dell, and then it descended into a ravine, at
the bottom of which there was a foaming torrent tumbling over a very
rocky bed. The path by this time became quite a road, though it was a
very wild and stony road. It kept near the bank of the brook,
continually ascending, until at last it turned suddenly away from the
brook, and went up diagonally upon the side of a hill. There were
openings in the woods on the lower side of the road, through which
Wallace got occasional glimpses of the distant valleys. Wallace was
very much interested in these prospects, but Phonny's attention was
wholly occupied as he went along, in looking over all the logs, and
rocks,