long look he
and his mother were taking at each other when some strange women came in
and interrupted them."

The heads exclaimed with me in wonder and loving interest.

"Give it to me," I said, "so that I may send it off at once to be
enlarged for his Christmas present."

_Friday._

Very heavy rains for three days, and another big "tide," with seven
panels of the back fence washed away, and Perilous a boiling yellow
flood down which logs and whole trees are rushing. What was my horror,
on hearing loud cheers from the stable-lot this morning, to see Nucky
out in the middle of the torrent, standing calmly on a swift log, which
even as I glanced, shot around a curve and out of sight. Ten minutes of
agony for me followed; then Nucky reappeared, wet only to the waist, and
followed by every boy on the place.

"Gee, that wasn't nothing," he deprecated, in answer to my reproaches,
"I've rid logs ever sence I was born. I just jumped on her when she come
a-nigh shore, and off again down Perilous a piece. I haint afeared!"

"Haint afeared got his neck broke yesterday," remarked Joab, drily.

These desperate and daring moods of Nucky's are source of untold
suffering to me. I know they are caused largely by his worry over Blant,
and his baffled desire to be at his post on Trigger. Sometimes I think
it would be best to let him go,--there can be no doubt that Blant does
need him, and he is doing little in his studies, and is so bitter and
gloomy that I scarcely know my once delightful boy.

XVI

FILIAL PIETY AND CROUP

_Saturday Bed-time._

This evening, while we were popping corn in the "fotch-on" poppers,
Killis said he could recollect "capping" corn in a skillet under the
still while he and his father made liquor.

"You made liquor?" I exclaimed.

"Can't remember when I didn't," he replied; "I holp paw from the time I
could walk. I would go with him up the hollow, and gather wood for the
fire, and then set and watch the singlings whilst he kep' a lookout for
officers. And sometimes he would let me mix the doublings, too. And when
the liquor was made, and folks would come to buy it, I would circle
round up in the field where it was hid, to show 'em the place, and they
would come up with their jugs and leave the money under a stump. Gee, I
knowed so much about the business I could run it myself!"

"I hope and pray you never will," I said, earnestly.

"What you got again' it,--you haint no offic