"snoopin'" around for
something! He knew that he dared not touch the letter-bag,--Leonidas had
heard somewhere that it was a deadly crime to touch any letters after
the Government had got hold of them once, and he had no fears for the
safety of hers. But ought he not go back at once and tell her about
her husband's visit, and the alarming fact that the postmaster was
personally acquainted with all the letters? He instantly saw, too, the
wisdom of her inclosing her letter hereafter in another address. Yet he
finally resolved not to tell her to-day,--it would look like "hanging
round" again; and--another secret reason--he was afraid that any
allusion to her husband's interference would bring back that change
in her beautiful face which he did not like. The better to resist
temptation, he went back another way.

It must not be supposed that, while Leonidas indulged in this secret
passion for the beautiful stranger, it was to the exclusion of his
boyish habits. It merely took the place of his intellectual visions and
his romantic reading. He no longer carried books in his pocket on his
lazy rambles. What were mediaeval legends of high-born ladies and their
pages to this real romance of himself and Mrs. Burroughs? What were the
exploits of boy captains and juvenile trappers and the Indian maidens
and Spanish senoritas to what was now possible to himself and his
divinity here--upon Casket Ridge! The very ground around her was now
consecrated to romance and adventure. Consequently, he visited a
few traps on his way back which he had set for "jackass-rabbits" and
wildcats,--the latter a vindictive reprisal for aggression upon an
orphan brood of mountain quail which he had taken under his protection.
For, while he nourished a keen love of sport, it was controlled by a
boy's larger understanding of nature: a pantheistic sympathy with
man and beast and plant, which made him keenly alive to the strange
cruelties of creation, revealed to him some queer animal feuds, and made
him a chivalrous partisan of the weaker. He had even gone out of his way
to defend, by ingenious contrivances of his own, the hoard of a golden
squirrel and the treasures of some wild bees from a predatory bear,
although it did not prevent him later from capturing the squirrel by an
equally ingenious contrivance, and from eventually eating some of the
honey.

He was late home that evening. But this was "vacation,"--the district
school was closed, and but for