f this one, and water on the other. Wild grapes climbed
from the bushes to the lower branches and trailed back to earth again.
Here, I had two secrets I didn't propose to tell. One was that in the
crotch of some tiptop branches the biggest chicken hawks you ever saw
had their nest, and if they took too many chickens father said they'd
have to be frightened a little with a gun. I can't begin to tell how I
loved those hawks. They did the one thing I wanted to most, and never
could. When I saw them serenely soar above the lowest of the soft
fleecy September clouds, I was wild with envy. I would have gone
without chicken myself rather than have seen one of those splendid big
brown birds dropped from the skies. I was so careful to shield them,
that I selected this for my especial retreat when I wanted most to be
alone, and I carefully gathered up any offal from the nest that might
point out their location, and threw it into the water where it ran the
swiftest.

I parted the vines and crept where the roots of the big oak stretched
like bony fingers over the water, that was slowly eating under it and
baring its roots. I sat on them above the water and thought. I had
decided the day before about my going to school, and the day before
that, and many, many times before that, and here I was having to settle
it all over again. Doubled on the sak roots, a troubled little soul, I
settled it once more.

No books or teachers were needed to tell me about flowing water and
fish, how hawks raised their broods and kept house, about the softly
cooing doves of the spice thickets, the cuckoos slipping snakelike in
and out of the wild crab-apple bushes, or the brown thrush's weird call
from the thorn bush. I knew what they said and did, but their names,
where they came from, where they went when the wind blew and the snow
fell--how was I going to find out that? Worse yet were the flowers,
butterflies, and moths; they were mysteries past learning alone, and
while the names I made up for them were pretty and suitable, I knew in
all reason they wouldn't be the same in the books. I had to go, but no
one will ever know what it cost. When the supper bell rang, I sat
still. I'd have to wait until at least two tables had been served,
anyway, so I sat there and nursed my misery, looked and listened, and
by and by I felt better. I couldn't see or hear a thing that was
standing still. Father said even the rocks grew larger year by year.