.

"I aim to do what's for the best, Martha, but I own I hain't got your
courage. You've been shovin' that boy up the steps o' the pulpit ever
since he let on like he could understand what you was sayin' to him, and
maybe it's all right. I've never been over on your side o' that fence,
and I don't know how things look over there. But if it was my doin's,
I'd be prayin' mighty hard to whatever God I believed in not to let me
make a hypocrite out'n o' Buddy. I would _so_."

Thomas Jefferson was told what was in store for him only a short time
before his outsetting for the sectarian home school in a neighboring
state, which was the joint selection of his mother and Uncle Silas. He
took it with outward calm, as he would have taken anything from a prize
to a whipping. But there was dumb rebellion within when his mother read
him the letter he was to carry to the principal--a letter written by
Brother Crafts to one of like precious faith, commending the lamb of the
flock, and definitely committing that lamb as a chosen vessel. It was
unfair, he cried inwardly, in a hot upflash of antagonism. He might
choose to be a preacher; he had always meant to be one, for his mother's
sake. But to be pushed and driven--

He took his last afternoon for a ramble in the fields and woods beyond
the manor-house, in that part of the valley as yet unfurrowed by the
industrial plow. It was not the old love of the solitudes that called
him; it was rather a sore-hearted desire to go apart and give place to
all the hard thoughts that were bubbling and boiling within.

A long circuit over the boundary hills brought him at length to the
little glade with the pool in its center where he had been fishing for
perch on that day when Ardea and the great dog had come to make him
back-slide. He wondered if she had ever forgiven him. Most likely she
had not. She never seemed to think him greatly worth while when they
happened to meet.

He was sitting on the overhanging bank, just where he had sat that other
day, when suddenly history repeated itself. There was a rustling in the
bushes; the Great Dane bounded out, though not as before to stand
menacing; and when he turned his head she was there near him.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said coolly; and then she called to the dog
and made as if she would go away. But Thomas Jefferson's heart was full,
and full hearts are soft.

"You needn't run," he hazarded. "I reckon I ain't going to bite you. I
don't feel