“Why does it point toward the north star?” I used to ask.

“That’s a secret,” said Uncle Peabody.  “I wouldn’t wonder if the gate o’ heaven was up there.  Maybe it’s a light in God’s winder.  Who knows?  I kind o’ mistrust it’s the direction we’re all goin’ in.”

“You talk like one o’ them Universalists,” said Aunt Deel.  “They’re gettin’ thick as flies around here.”

“Wal, I kind o’ believe—­” he paused at the edge of what may have been a dangerous opinion.

I shook the box and the needle swung and quivered back and forth and settled with its point in the north again.  Oh, what a mystery!  My eyes grew big at the thought of it.

“Do folks take compasses with ’em when they die?” I asked.

“No, they don’t need ’em then,” said Uncle Peabody.  “Everybody has a kind of a compass in his own heart—­same as watermelons and chickens have.  It shows us the way to be useful, and I guess the way o’ usefulness is the way to heaven every time.”

“An’ the way o’ uselessness is the way to hell,” Aunt Deel added.

One evening in the early summer the great Silas Wright had come to our house from the village of Russell, where he had been training a company of militia.

I remember that as he entered our door he spoke in this fashion:  “Baynes, le’s go fishing.  All the way down the road I’ve heard the call o’ the brooks.  I stopped on the Dingley Bridge and looked down at the water.  The trout were jumping so I guess they must ‘a’ got sunburnt and freckled and sore.  I can’t stand too much o’ that kind o’ thing.  It riles me.  I heard, long ago, that you were a first-class fisherman, so I cut across lots and here I am.”

His vivid words touched my imagination and I have often recalled them.

“Well, now by mighty!  I—­” Uncle Peabody drew the rein upon his imagination at the very brink of some great extravagance and after a moment’s pause added:  “We’ll start out bright an’ early in the mornin’ an’ go up an’ git Bill Seaver.  He’s got a camp on the Middle Branch, an’ he can cook almost as good as my sister.”

“Is your spring’s work done?”

“All done, an’ I was kind o’ thinkin’,” said Uncle Peabody with a little shake of his head.  He didn’t say of what he had been thinking, that being unnecessary.

“Bart, are you with us?” said Mr. Wright as he gave me a playful poke with his hand.

“May I go?” I asked my uncle.

“I wouldn’t wonder—­go an’ ask yer aunt,” said Uncle Peabody.

My soul was afire with eagerness.  My feet shook the floor and I tipped over a chair in my hurry to get to the kitchen, whither my aunt had gone soon after the appearance of our guest.  She was getting supper for Mr. Wright.

“Aunt Deel, I’m goin’ fishin’,” I said.

“Fishin’!  I guess not—­ayes I do,” she answered.

It was more than I could stand.  A roar of distress and disappointment came from my lips.