Biddy’s remark about the Indian tobacco bore fruit.  Yan was not a smoker, but now he felt he must learn.  He gathered a lot of this tobacco, put it to dry, and set about making a pipe—­a real Indian peace pipe.  He had no red sandstone to make it of, but a soft red brick did very well.  He first roughed out the general shape with his knife, and was trying to bore the bowl out with the same tool, when he remembered that in one of the school-readers was an account of the Indian method of drilling into stone with a bow-drill and wet sand.  One of his schoolmates, the son of a woodworker, had seen his father use a bow-drill.  This knowledge gave him new importance in Yan’s eyes.  Under his guidance a bow-drill was made, and used much and on many things till it was understood, and now it did real Indian service by drilling the bowl and stem holes of the pipe.

He made a stem of an Elderberry shoot, punching out the pith at home with a long knitting-needle.  Some white pigeon wing feathers trimmed small, and each tipped with a bit of pitch, were strung on a stout thread and fastened to the stem for a finishing touch; and he would sit by his camp fire solemnly smoking—­a few draws only, for he did not like it—­then say, “Ugh, heap hungry,” knock the ashes out, and proceed with whatever work he had on hand.

Thus he spent the bright Saturdays, hiding his accouterments each day in his shanty, washing the paint from his face in the brook, and replacing the hated paper collar that the pride and poverty of his family made a daily necessity, before returning home.  He was a little dreamer, but oh! what happy dreams.  Whatever childish sorrow he found at home he knew he could always come out here and forget and be happy as a king—­be a real King in a Kingdom wholly after his heart, and all his very own.

XII

A Crisis

At school he was a model boy except in one respect—­he had strange, uncertain outbreaks of disrespect for his teachers.  One day he amused himself by covering the blackboard with ridiculous caricatures of the principal, whose favourite he undoubtedly was.  They were rather clever and proportionately galling.  The principal set about an elaborate plan to discover who had done them.  He assembled the whole school and began cross-examining one wretched dunce, thinking him the culprit.  The lad denied it in a confused and guilty way; the principal was convinced of his guilt, and reached for his rawhide, while the condemned set up a howl.  To the surprise of the assembly, Yan now spoke up, and in a tone of weary impatience said: 

“Oh, let him alone.  I did it.”

His manner and the circumstances were such that every one laughed.  The principal was nettled to fury.  He forgot his manhood; he seized Yan by the collar.  He was considered a timid boy; his face was white; his lips set.  The principal beat him with the rawhide till the school cried “Shame,” but he got no cry from Yan.