o close
to these that all their perfumes blended, and the phlox and pinks could
see their own cousins but a few feet away. The short path ran through
a clump of bushes but a few yards from the creek. In these bushes
song-sparrows and "chippy-birds" built their nests.

In the doorway of the little house by the forests edge stood, one
afternoon in summer, a young man. He was what might perhaps be termed
an exceedingly young man, as his sixth birthday was but lately
attained, and his stature and general appearance did not contradict his
age. His apparel was not, strictly speaking, in keeping with the glory
of the general scene. His hat had been originally of the quality known
as "chip," but the rim was gone, and what remained had an air of
abandon about it. His clothing consisted of two garments, a striped,
hickory shirt and trousers of blue drilling. The trousers were
supported by suspenders, home-made, of the same material. Sometimes he
wore but one. It saved trouble. He was barefooted. He stood with a
hand in each pocket, his short legs rather wide apart, and looked out
upon the landscape. His air was that of a large landed proprietor,
one, for instance, who owned the earth.

This young man under consideration had not been in society to any great
extent, and of one world had seen very little. Of another he knew a
great deal, for his age. With people of the sort who live in towns he
was unacquainted, but with nature's people he was on closer terms. He
had a great friend and crony in a person who had been a teacher, and
who had come to this frontier life from a broader field. This person
was his mother. With his father he was also on a relationship of
familiarity, but the father was, necessarily, out with his axe most of
the time, and so it came that the young man and his mother were more
literally growing up together with the country. To her he went with
such problems as his great mind failed to solve, and he had come to
have a very good opinion of her indeed. Not that she was as wise as he
in many things; certainly not. She did not know how the new woodchuck
hole was progressing, nor where the coon tracks were thickest along the
creek, nor where the woodpecker was nesting; but she was excessively
learned, nevertheless, and could be relied upon in an emergency. He
approved of her, decidedly. Besides, he remembered her course on one
occasion when he was in a great strait. He was but three years old