ose, still holding the fawn in his arms.

"You can take the gun and go on. Boney and me'll go back home----"

"You ain't goin' ter carry that thing clean home, are you?"

"Yes, I am," was the quiet answer. "And I'll kill any dog that tries to
hurt him."

Dennis was still laughing when he disappeared, Boney walking slowly at
his heels.

He showed the fawn to his mother and told Sarah she could have him for a
pet. The mother watched him with shining eyes while he built a pen and
then lifted the still trembling wild thing inside.

Next morning the pen was down and the captive gone. The Boy didn't seem
much surprised or appear to care. When he was alone with his mother she
whispered:

"Didn't you go out there last night and let it loose when the dogs were
asleep?"

He was still a moment and then nodded his head.

His mother clasped him to her heart.

"O my Boy! My own--I love you!"

XII

The second winter in the wilderness was not so hard. The heavy work of
clearing the timber for the corn fields was done and the new cabin and
its furniture had been finished except the door, for which there was
little use.

The new neighbors had brought cheer to the mother's heart.

An early spring broke the winter of 1818 and clothed the wilderness
world in robes of matchless beauty.

The Boy's gourds were placed beside the new garden and the noise of
chattering martins echoed over the cabin. The toughened muscles of his
strong, slim body no longer ached in rebellion at his tasks. Work had
become a part of the rhythm of life. He could sing at his hardest task.
The freedom and strength of the woods had gotten into his blood. In this
world of waving trees, of birds and beasts, of laughing sky and rippling
waters, there were no masters, no slaves. Millions in gold were of no
value in its elemental struggle. Character, skill, strength and manhood
only counted. Poverty was teaching him the first great lesson of human
life, that man shall eat his bread in the sweat of his brow and that
industry is the only foundation on which the moral and material universe
has ever rested or can rest.

Solitude and the stimulus of his mother's mind were slowly teaching him
to think--to think deeply and fearlessly, and think for himself.

Entering now in his ninth year, he was shy, reticent, over-grown,
consciously awkward, homely and ill clad--he grew so rapidly it was
impossible to make his clothes fit. But in the depths of his hazel-gr