Still no tidings ever came of the lost boy.  Many things were whispered, about Mr. Mount’s dishonesty of character and there were many suspicions about him, but no real facts could be shown to account for the boy.  The neighbors said he never worked like the rest of them, and that his patch of cultivated land was altogether too small to support his family, a wife and two daughters, grown.  He was a very smooth and affable talker, and had lots of acquaintances.  A few years afterwards Mr. Mount was convicted of a crime which sent him to the Jackson State Prison, where he died before his term expired.  I visited the Filley family in 1870, and from them heard the facts anew and that no trace of the lost boy had ever been discovered.

CHAPTER V.

The second year of sickness and I was affected with the rest, though it was not generally so bad as the first year.  I suffered a great deal and felt so miserable that I began to think I had rather live on the top of the Rocky Mountains and catch chipmuncks for a living than to live here and be sick, and I began to have very serious thoughts of trying some other country.  In the winter of 1839 and 1840 I went to a neighboring school for three months, where I studied reading, writing and spelling, getting as far as Rule of Three in Daboll’s arithmetic.  When school was out I chopped and split rails for Wm. Hanna till I had paid my winter’s board.  After this, myself and a young man named Orrin Henry, with whom I had become acquainted, worked awhile scoring timber to be used in building the Michigan Central Railroad which had just then begun to be built.  They laid down the ties first (sometimes a mudsill under them) and then put down four by eight wooden rails with a strips of band iron half an inch thick spiked on top.  I scored the timber and Henry used the broad axe after me.  It was pretty hard work and the hours as long as we could see, our wages being $13 per month, half cash.

In thinking over our prospect it seemed more and more as if I had better look out for my own fortune in some other place.  The farm was pretty small for all of us.  There were three brothers younger than I, and only 200 acres in the whole, and as they were growing up to be men it seemed as if it would be best for me, the oldest, to start out first and see what could be done to make my own living.  I talked to father and mother about my plans, and they did not seriously object, but gave me some good advice, which I remember to this day—­“Weigh well every thing you do; shun bad company; be honest and deal fair; be truthful and never fear when you know you are right.”  But, said he, “Our little peach trees will bear this year, and if you go away you must come back and help us eat them; they will be the first we ever raised or ever saw.”  I could not promise.