threw it into the road, and the
action served to relieve him a little.

"Well, what'll _I_ do? now let's think. If a tiger should come right
down this ferry-hill, and tear me all to pieces, Fred wouldn't care.
'Course not. All he cares is to get enough to eat, and not make his feet
sore. He don't care what comes of me. I've got to think it out for
myself, what I'd better do. Got to do it myself, too, all alone, and
there won't be anybody to help me. Pretty scrape, I should think! Might
have known better'n to come!

"Well; will I be a lumberman and go up to the Forks? Let's see; I don'
know the way up there. That makes it bad, 'cause I guess there isn't
much of any road to it 'cept spotted trees; that's what I heard once.
Most likely I'd get lost. Fred wouldn't care if I did; be glad, I
s'pose. But, then, there's bears. Ugh! Pshaw! who's afraid of bears? And
then there's mother--O, I didn't mean to think about mother!"

Willy sighed, but soon roused himself.

"Well, what'll I do? O, wasn't that a real poor breakfast the woman gave
us? Don't see how I swallowed it! Makes me sick to think of it. Didn't
taste much like mother's breakfasts! I don't want to go where I'll have
to drink molasses in my coffee, and eat fatty potatoes too.

"And who'd take a little boy like me? Folks laugh at little boys--think
they don't know a thing. And folks always ask so many questions. They
want to know where you come from, and who your father is, and if he's
got any cows. And I _won't_ lie. And next thing they'd be sending me
home. They'd say home was the best place for little boys. H'm! So it is,
if you don't have to get whipped!

"O, my! Didn't I have to take it that last time? Father never hurt so
before. Made all the bad come up in my throat, and I can't swallow it
down yet. It would be good enough for him if I was dead; for then every
time he went out to the barn there'd be that horsewhip hanging up on the
nail; and he'd think to himself--'Where's that little boy I used to
whip?' And then the tears will come into his eyes, I pretty much know
they will. I saw the tears in his eyes once when I was sick. He felt
real bad; but when I got well, first thing he did was to whip me again.
Whippings don't do any good. All that does any good is when mother talks
to me; and that don't do any good, either. She made me learn this
verse:--

"'And thou, Solomon, my son, know thou the God of thy fathers, and serve
him with a perfect heart and