was told to have no association with the “bound boy;” learning of which, he had steeled his proud young heart and had spoken to her only when necessary.

So with work, day in and day out, save for a few winter weeks in school, the years had passed, until he made the acquaintance of John Jerome, the son of a distant neighbor. Too poverty-distressed to be proud, he had known little happiness except a sort of sad pleasure he found in visiting the church-yard, where in summer he placed great bunches of wild flowers on the mound to him most sacred.

For two years he and John had been intimate friends. The latter being sometimes employed by Mr. Catesby, gave the boys additional opportunities of being with one another. Late at night after a long, hard day in the harvest fields, they had gone swimming together. They had borrowed a gun, and John’s money bought the ammunition they used in learning to shoot, to practice which they had risen before sunrise; for at Old Sol’s first peep the day’s work must be begun. Many a time they had labored all day, then tramped the woods all night, hunting ’coons, coming home in time only to catch a wink of sleep before jumping into their clothes and away to work again.

Sometimes in winter when, by reason of John helping him with his work, Ree was able to secure a half-day off, the boys had sought other game, and shared the profits arising from their hunting and trapping. What with the knowledge they thus picked up themselves, and the instruction given them by Peter Piper and others, there were no two boys in Connecticut better versed in woodcraft.

Ree thought of all these things as he lay awake looking out through his window at the stars in the western sky. And as his thoughts ran on, he reflected on the death of Mr. Catesby a short eight months ago, and the great change it had brought into his life. From the moment Mrs. Catesby had called him to go for the doctor when her husband was taken ill, she had depended on him in nearly everything. It was he who took charge of all the farm work of the spring and summer, and the neighbors had said the Catesby place never produced better crops. With scarcely a pause except on Sundays, he had toiled early and late to accomplish this. Only within the past few weeks when the rush of the harvest was over, had he allowed himself any time for recreation. Yet it had been a happy summer, he thought. Mrs. Catesby, appreciative of his splendid services, had been all kindness; Mary Catesby had been agreeable as his own sister might have been. Both had forgotten, or at least no longer observed, the bar of social inequality which Mr. Catesby had set up against the “bound boy.”

Then in August had come Mrs. Catesby’s decision to remove to the city that her daughter might have educational advantages. It was with genuine regret that Ree had learned her plans. He would never have admitted even to himself that he had, in a certain boyish, vague way, dreamed of a dim, distant time when he and Mary might be more than friends; but maybe some such thought had been in his mind at some time. Strange it would be had nothing of the kind occurred to him.

Thus as he lay awake still pondering on the past, the present and the future, in the depths of Ree’s heart of hearts there may have been a wish that he should become a successful man, wealthy perhaps, well-to-do certainly; but in any event, looked up to and respected.

But, oh!—What obstacles confronted him! How could he ever be more than a rough, uneducated “bound boy” that he was! The subject was not a pleasant one, but he gave it most serious thought, and determined for the hundredth time, that, come what might, he would make the most of his opportunities and ever be able to hold up his head in any company.

So his reflections passed to the future. He was to receive $100 for his summer’s work. He also had some money which he had secured in odd sums from time to time, safely put away in the chest beneath his bed.

John Jerome had a hoard of savings, too. How should they best invest their joint capital for their proposed journey to the western wilderness, where, they planned, they would make homes and secure farms for themselves amid savages and wild beasts! They must be obtaining this and other information at once. They would have learned much that very evening had not the man to whom they were going in quest of advice, been assaulted by Big Pete Ellis. And what of that burly giant, by the way?

“But this will never do. I must be getting to sleep,” Ree said to himself.

Going to sleep just when one wishes, however, is not always easy. Ree found it the very opposite. Tired as he was, his mind went over the adventure of the night, and in a round-about way to his future home in the wilderness, again, before his eyes closed. At last dreams came to him, and in one of them he saw Big Pete waving a white handkerchief as a flag of truce. He could not make out for whom the sign of peace was meant; for a war party of Indians seemed to be hot on the giant’s trail, and it was in the opposite direction that Pete waved the handkerchief.

Ree recalled the dream when pulling on his boots in the morning, and pondered over the possibility of its having some significance.

Many times during that day the young man had occasion to remember the incidents of the night preceding. Everyone he met, it seemed, had heard of his adventure with Big Pete and they all congratulated him. More than one, too, warned him against the giant Ellis, saying the fellow would surely seek revenge.

Ree gave but little heed to this talk. Big Pete had had the chance to kill him, or at least to attempt it, and had not done so, evidently wishing to avoid blood-shed. But Peter Piper came along during the afternoon with a story which he had heard in the adjacent village, that gave the boy some uneasiness. Big Pete had sent word by a farmer he had seen at daybreak, that he would return to his old haunts and that not a man would dare to touch him; that he would not be driven off, though he had killed both Jim Huson and Marvel Rice, and that those who had interfered with him would suffer for it.

“He’s a braggart,” said Ree contemptuously.

“Jes’ what he says, he will do. He’s bad, bad, bad,” said Peter Piper in his simple, earnest way.

So Ree came to look upon the matter with much seriousness. Somehow it occurred to him that the giant might seek revenge by burning the barn or poisoning the horses, or some such cowardly thing—he knew not what. For himself he was not afraid, and it is not strange that in the wildest flights of his lively fancy he did not for a moment imagine under what startling circumstances he was destined to next behold the fugitive criminal.

“Hitch yer cheers up t’ the blaze; it’s a cool night fer September,” said Captain Bowen, drawing his own splint-bottom chair toward the great fire-place of his homely but thoroughly comfortable home, and slowly sipping new cider, just old enough to sparkle, from the bright pewter mug containing it.

“An’ help yerselves to some more cider, naow dew; I like a man to feel at home,” he went on as Return Kingdom and John Jerome gave heed to his kindly bidding.

“Naow as I was a sayin’,” Captain Bowen continued, “I r’ally kent advise yeu youngsters t’ undertake these plans yer minds air set on. The Injuns hev hated us whites worse than ever sence the British turned their back to ’em after the war was