head of cattle before school-time in the morning,
rising at four o'clock for the purpose, and going over the work again
after school; and if he does not ride to the woods on Saturdays with the
choppers, the farmer calls him "dreadful slack." The boy would like to
get the work all finished some time, but on a hill-farm there is no hope
of being done save the hope of being done with it entirely. There is
always plenty of work for the boy. In the vast, dark, lofty,
cathedral-like orchard, whose untrimmed, mossy trees bear profusely on
their interlacing branches the small fair apples for countless barrels
of cider, there is work for him. There is plenty of work at the
cider-mill or in boiling down the sweet cider over the bonfire that
cheers the damp fall weather.

In fact, his tasks are endless. Perhaps it is raining like suds. The sun
for several weeks has reminded the hired man of a drop of hair-oil on a
basin of water. The only weather-sign that occurs to any one is the old
Indian one: "Cloudy all around, and pouring down in the middle." You
might suppose no work could be done in such weather. It is then the
farmer starts the boy off with five hundred dollars in his pocket to pay
various husbandmen for cattle, and with directions to make a detour on
his way back collecting moneys due for other cattle, stopping at the
Chittaninny Tavern to meet a man who will have a sum of cash ready for
him there. The Chittaninny Tavern is in a cutthroat neighborhood. The
man with the cash pays it at the bar in the presence of a crowd of
ruffians, the bartender looking over the boy's shoulder, and a loafer
follows him out to his horse, shows him a pistol and asks him if he
hasn't "one of them things." While the boy dashes homeward through the
rain and night, pursued in imagination by the man with the pistol, he
makes up his mind that a well-lighted city is the place for him to do
business in.

Should the rain lessen, the farmer and the boy set out for town with a
herd of cattle. Having disposed of the herd, on their homeward way,
toward nightfall, the boy, who has walked, as near as he can guess, four
hundred miles around the cattle in the November mud, is dismayed to see
the farmer stop at a house by the wayside. There are more cattle to be
bought and driven home. The master of the wayside house is in some
remote pasture, whither the boy runs to fetch him. After a long bargain
with this man the farmer pulls out a roll of bills, pays d