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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
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