joy in life.

Deeper he went, and nearer he got--the gun now held in both hands high
over his head, as he floundered along.

And just then a dreadful thing happened.

He stepped into a hole, and it suddenly let him down so that the water
was over his head, and his up reached arms, and the precious gun too!

In the shock and the surprise, he let go of the weapon, and it sank
out of sight. He had no fear of drowning, and he struck out manfully
when he found himself in the deep water.

But he had to give up the idea of finding the gun, and the birds were
left where they lay on the farther side of the treacherous channel.

It was a long, hard run home, over those five wet and freezing miles,
and the boy's heart was heavy because of the loss of that pet gun.

All the while he was learning everything that outdoors could teach
him, and he owes to that breezy, sun-shot, storm-swept gipsying during
the summer vacations the beginning of the stock of good health that
has made him such a strong, useful, happy man, able to do no end of
hard work without getting tired, and always finding it fun to live.

II

SCHOOL--AND AFTER

This Robin Hood kind of life in the open went on till Wilf was
fourteen. Then he was sent away to Marlborough College--a boy's school
which had 600 pupils. Marlborough is in the Chalk Hills of the
Marlborough Downs, seventy-five miles west of London. The building,
dating from 1843, is on the site of a castle of Henry I.

The first day Wilf landed there he looked about him and felt pretty
forlorn.

"I wonder if I'll ever get to know all those boys?" he asked himself.

When he was at home, he had a room all his own or shared one with his
brother. Here it was so different.

He counted the beds in his dormitory. There were twenty-five of them.
"How can a fellow ever get to sleep in such a crowd?" he wondered.
"Perhaps they'll toss me in a blanket, the way they did in 'Tom Brown
at Rugby.' Well, if they try anything like that, they'll find I'm
ready for them!"

He felt the mattress. "Pretty hard compared with the beds at home, but
no matter. Let's see what the schoolroom is like."

So he went into the "Big School" as it was called. Three hundred boys
were supposed to study there.

"Gracious!" exclaimed Wilf. "Don't see how a fellow ever gets his
lessons in a place like this."

It was as busy and as noisy as a bear-garden. Here and there a boy
with his hands over his ears was really loo