ill I am
calm. By God's grace I will never touch his flesh again in anger."

Nevertheless he dared not trust himself to refer to the battles which
shamed them all. The boy was deeply repentant, but uttered no word of
it. And so they grew ever more silent and vengeful in their intercourse.

Harold early developed remarkable skill with horses, and once rode in
the races at the County Fair, to the scandal of the First Church. He not
only won the race, but was at once offered a great deal of money to go
with the victor to other races. To his plea the father, with deep-laid
diplomacy, replied:

"Very well; study hard this year and next year you may go." But the boy
was just at the age to take on weight rapidly, and by the end of the
year was too heavy, and the owner of the horse refused to repeat his
offer. Harold did not fail to remark how he had been cheated, but said
nothing more of his wish to be a jockey.

He was also fond of firearms, and during his boyhood his father tried in
every way to keep weapons from him, and a box in his study contained a
contraband collection of his son's weapons. There was a certain pathos
in this little arsenal, for it gave evidence of considerable labor on
the boy's part, and expressed much of buoyant hope and restless energy.

There were a half-dozen Fourth of July pistols, as many cannons for
crackers, and three attempts at real guns intended to explode powder and
throw a bullet. Some of them were "toggled up" with twine, and one or
two had handles rudely carved out of wood. Two of them were genuine
revolvers which he had managed to earn by working in the harvest field
on the Burns' farm.

From his fifteenth year he was never without a shotgun and revolver. The
shotgun was allowed, but the revolver was still contraband and kept
carefully concealed. On Fourth of July he always helped to fire the
anvil and fireworks, for he was deft and sure and quite at home with
explosives. He had acquired great skill with both gun and pistol as
early as his thirteenth year, and his feats of marksmanship came now and
then to the ears of his father.

The father and son were in open warfare. Harold submitted to every
command outwardly, but inwardly vowed to break all restraint which he
considered useless or unjust.

His great ambition was to acquire a "mustang pony," for all the
adventurous spirits of the dime novels he had known carried revolvers
and rode mustangs. He did not read much, but when h