n, only in place of another "birching" the filial
duty was limited to sending the boy to bed without anything to eat, so
he could reflect upon the awful crime of disobedience to his teacher.

Nature has ever been prodigal in the distribution of her favors and
disfavors, limiting her generosity in the picturesque to certain
localities, and giving in abundance to the arid regions, as well as to
the fertile valleys. But in her selfish allotments no upheavals in the
vast chaos of creation furnished man an abiding place so compatible with
his Puritanical doctrines as the forbidding rock-walled coast of New
England and the everlasting hills extending back to the Hudson River,
with their beautiful slopes, sinuous streams and forest-scented dales.
And it was among these hills that Jack found, even in his younger days,
that pleasure and freedom which afterward was intensified by his
associations with the forest-born red man.

Old Bozrah, where he first saw the light of day, was the Mecca to which
his longing gaze was ever turned, even as he studied, worked or played,
and no greater treat was in store for him than the one looked forward to
when his father hitched up "Old Jerry" to drive that long twenty miles,
through villages and past cross-road stores, to the old farm house. "Old
Jerry" was known even better than "Thad" Sheppard. Every factory hand on
Mill River from where it emptied into the Connecticut to the great
reservoirs in the Goshen hills, and every farmer, merchant and preacher
knew "Thad" and "Old Jerry."

"Thad" was well aware of the danger that lurked in the old reservoirs
and knew the day would come when the torrent would burst forth and sweep
all the industries away, and Jack wondered why everybody looked so grave
and serious when the spring freshets made the brooks roily so he could
not fish. In after years when that animated devastating fortress of
trees, rocks and factory debris crushed its way down the valley,
receiving its propulsive force from the waters which broke forth from
bondage, Jack remembered those grave and serious faces.

But it was among the hills of the Deerfield valley that Jack loved best
to wander and to fish for trout, or to help Uncle Zebedee and Uncle John
in planting or haying or "salting" the cattle, or gathering apples on
hills so steep that the fruit rolled a rod sometimes after falling from
the trees.

In the old barn at milking time, when the cows were yoked to their feed
racks