the plate was passed and I deposited a copper—the only coin I ever handled until I was ten or twelve years old. Then we filed solemnly home again.

My consciousness of evil-doing, however, rested lightly upon me. I had escaped the strap which hung behind the kitchen door, and which was a much more immediate menace than any possible torments of the after-world. I spent the remaining hours of the day in imagining situations in which I would save Jean from all kinds of disasters.

Next morning found me none the worse for my experience; indeed my dip over the dam already seemed a more or less vague recollection. After breakfast I made a journey to the big pine which grew at the very end of our little farm—a surviving monarch of the forest that in some way had escaped the locust-cloud of axe-men which had swarmed through the country twenty years before. All the good pine had been cut out then, but the hardwoods, being heavier and more difficult to market, had been left, and with them my father had wrestled many a sundown hour, and into the night until he could no longer see. But this lone pine had remained standing, a proud and melancholy reminder of the greatness of the forest and of the insane destructiveness of the maggots of men who had over-run it, sweeping away in a season that which the centuries had borne but which the centuries will not return.

I took my way in the warm morning sun past the cow-stables—the "byre" it was in those days—through the vegetable garden, and down a path between rows of sprouting corn which led to the uncleared land at the back of the farm. Here was a wooden fence to keep the cattle off the corn field. I slipped easily between the bars and followed the path, now a cow-path winding sinuously about the trunks of sturdy maples, until it brought me under the shadow of the great, green arms. Far aloft the old tree towered in majestic symmetry, and the morning breeze passed through its branches with a sound as of a mighty wind. I threw myself on the grass at its feet, and there, lying on my back, with my eyes partly shaded by my hand, I watched the fleecy clouds far, far above as they trailed their gossamer laces across the blue portals of heaven, and dreamed of a day when I should do something great and be a hero in the eyes of Jean.

Perhaps it was as I lay under the great pine on that sunny summer morning and watched the filmy clouds float gently overhead that I caught my first glimpse, shyly, wonderingly, through the golden gates of romance. It was a vision of Jean; a vision which has remained with me through the years, growing, thrilling in my moments of happiness, fading in my hours of darkness, but at no time quite obscure. Perhaps it was my first glimpse of that vision which brought me on that morning to my feet where the great pine's swaying lacework of sun and shadow patterned the green grass and set my heart lilting with the joy of being alive.

I was about to shape my lips for a whistle when I became conscious of a presence. It was Jean, her golden locks held together by a midget sunbonnet, save for some vagrant curls which nestled against the peach-pink bloom of her cheeks; her chubby bare feet seeking cover in the grass.

"I saw you going to the big tree", she explained, "so I comed too."

"Uh-huh," I commented cautiously, being gripped with a sudden sense that this young woman had led me into difficulties only a day ago. Men cannot be too careful.

She sidled toward me. "Do you know what you have to do for yesterday?" she queried.

"No," I said, with some misgiving, thinking that possibly my behavior had been reported to the Lanes to my disadvantage.

"Gwandma says when a young la-dy saves a young gen-tle-man, he-has-to-mawwy-her," she said, speaking very slowly at first, but finishing her sentence with a little run. "So you have to mawwy me."

She was beside me now, and her face was radiant with the excitement of her secret.

"But I can't marry you! Only grown-ups do that!" I protested.

"Won't we be gwown-ups some day?"

"I guess so," I admitted. And then with a sudden burst of resolution I added, "And then I'll marry you."

She held her face up to me and I leaned over and kissed it shyly. Then, hand in hand, we retraced our way down the cow-path, along the rows of sprouting corn, by the stables and past our house. Jean led me to her own home, which was next to ours, down the road.

"You have to ask Mama," she said, as our little figures dropped their shadows across Mrs. Lane's kitchen floor.

This was more than I had bargained for. I was beginning to discover that Miss Jean was a young woman of action as well as decision. But I was game.

"Mrs. Lane," I said, bracing my chubby legs for the ordeal, "I-want-to-marry-Jean."

Jean's mother looked at me with a smile that broadened until it broke into open laughter.

"I am afraid you are very precocious children," she remarked. I didn't know what that meant, but she gave us each a doughnut, and we went away happy, Jean twirling hers on her finger for a wedding ring.

CHAPTER II.

That same summer I began going to school. Perhaps I should say that John Lane and I began going to school, as it was something of a joint adventure. We talked of it together for weeks before the great event. At that time my objective in life, in so far as I had one, was to be a locomotive engineer, but John had elected to be the owner of a woolen mill—blandly overlooking the little question of capital—and we discussed our school training in the light of these ambitions.

On the eventful morning I remember my father coming into the loft and leaning over my bed, where I feigned sleep. "Puir wee mannie," I heard him say, dropping into the Scotch tongue which he reserved for moments of emotion, "it's a long road he's starting on, and a hard one, too, or he'll no be like the rest o' us." My mother scoured me well and dressed me in a clean new suit and took my cheeks between her hands and kissed me, and told me to work hard and grow up a good man like my father. At the gate I met John, and together we started down the turnpike of life.

I spent the day becoming accustomed to my new environment, and marvelling over a certain bald spot on the teacher's head which shone resplendent when the light struck it a certain way, and wondering what possible advantage it could be to a locomotive engineer to know that A had two slanting legs tied together in the middle. But nothing of importance happened until after school was dismissed, when suddenly I found myself surrounded by a group of boys a little older than myself. A carroty-headed little gamin about my size came dancing out in front of me, flinging his arms about and demanding, "Kin you fight?"

I was much too guileless to realize that this was an undersized boy, nine or ten years old, a bully who maintained his position by picking fights with children about his own size, but much his inferior in strength and hardihood. Now I had never been in a fight in my life, unless dragging Marjorie home once or twice when she was obstreperous could be so described. I don't know what made me answer as I did; probably it was the immeasurable insolence on his little, twisted face, but I shouted, "You bet! I can knock your head off!"

The boast was no sooner out than I got a smash on the mouth which set my lips trembling and drew a veil of mist across my eyes. This was followed instantly by a blow in each eye, and I saw light dancing in all directions. I could make no defence, and my assailant proceeded to punish me systematically. The little circle of savages were shouting, "Punch him, Carrots! Punch him, Carrots!" and I could have testified that Carrots was following their advice. I threw my arms about in the air and yelled with what breath I had left, but I did not run away; I stood and took it. That is one of the facts of my life which I like to remember, that although hopelessly outclassed in my first