“Come and recite your lesson in arithmetic?” said he to Boone, in a voice of thunder.  The usually rubicund face of the Irishman was by this time a deadly pale.  Slate in hand, the docile lad presented himself before his master.

“Take six from nine, and what remain?”

“Three, sir.”

“True.  That will answer for whole numbers, now for your fractions.  Take three-quarters from an integer, and what remains?”

“The whole.”

“You blockhead! you numscull!” exclaimed the master, as the strokes fell like a hail shower; “let me hear you demonstrate that.”

“If I subtract one bottle of whisky, and replace it with one in which I have mixed an emetic, will not the whole remain, if nobody drinks it?”

By this time the medicine was taking fearful effect.  The united acclamations and shouts of the children, and the discovery of the compounder of his medicament, in no degree tended to soothe the infuriated master.  Young Boone, having paid for his sport by an ample drubbing, seized the opportune moment, floored his master, already weak and dizzy, sprang from the door, and made for the woods.  The adventure was soon blazoned.  A consultation of the patrons of the school was held.  Though young Boone was reprimanded, the master was dismissed.

This is all the certain information we possess, touching the training of young Boone, in the lore of books and schools.  Though he never afterwards could be brought back to the restraint of the walls of a school, it is well known, that in some way, in after life, he possessed himself of the rudiments of a common education.  His love for hunting and the woods now became an absorbing passion.  He possessed a dog and a fowling piece, and with these he would range whole days alone through the woods, often with no other apparent object, than the simple pleasure of these lonely wanderings.

One morning he was observed as usual, to throw the band, that suspended his shot bag, over one shoulder, and his gun over the other, and go forth accompanied by his dog.  Night came, but to the astonishment and alarm of his parents, the boy, as yet scarcely turned of fourteen, came not.  Another day and another night came, and passed, and still he returned not.  The nearest neighbors, sympathizing with the distressed parents, who considered him lost, turned out, to aid in searching for him.  After a long and weary search, at a distance of a league from any plantation, a smoke was seen arising from a temporary hovel of sods and branches, in which the astonished father found his child, apparently most comfortably established is his new experiment of house-keeping.  Numerous skins of wild animals were stretched upon his cabin, as trophies of his hunting prowess.  Ample fragments of their flesh were either roasting or preparing for cookery.  It may be supposed, that such a lad would be the theme of wonder and astonishment to the other boys of his age.