“I thought you wanted to study law.”

“I do; but I could be a great soldier, too.”

Gaudylock laughed.  “You would trap all the creatures in the wood!  Well, live long enough, and you’ll hear a drum beat.  They’re restless, restless, yonder on the rivers!  But they’ll need the lawyers, too.  Just see what the lawyers did when we fought the British!  Mr. Henry and Mr. Jefferson—­”

The boy put forth a sudden hand, gathered to him a pine bough, and with it smote the red coals of the fire.  “Oh!” he cried, “from morn till night my father keeps me in the fields.  It’s tobacco! tobacco! tobacco!  And I want to go to school—­I want to go to school!”

“That’s a queer wanting,” said the other thoughtfully.  “I’ve wanted fire when I was cold, and venison when I was hungry, and liquor when I was in company, and money when I was gaming, and a woman when the moon was shining and I wished to talk,—­but I have never wanted to go to school.  A schollard sees a wall every time he raises his head.  I like the open.”

“There are walls in the forest,” answered the boy, “and I do not want to be a tobacco-roller!  I want to study law!”

The hunter laughed.  “Ho!  A lawyer among the Rands!  I reckon you take after your mother’s folk!”

The boy looked at him wistfully.  “I reckon I do,” he assented.  “But my name is Rand.”

“There are worse folk than the Rands,” said the woodsman.  “I’ve never known one to let go, once he had man or beast by the throat!  Silent and holdfast and deadly to anger—­that’s the Rands.  If Gideon wants tobacco and you want learning, there’ll be a tussle!”

“My father’s a tyrant!” cried the boy passionately.  “If he doesn’t keep his hands off me, I’ll—­I’ll kill him!”

Gaudylock took the cigarro from his lips.  “You’re too fond of that word,” he exclaimed, with some sternness.  “All the wolves that the Rands ever hunted have somehow got into their blood.  Suppose you try a little unlearning?  Great lawyers and great men and great conquerors and good hunters don’t kill their fathers, Lewis,—­no, nor any other man, excepting always in fair fight.”

“I know—­I know!” said Lewis.  “Of course he’s my father.  But I never could stand for any one to get in my way!”

“That’s just what the rattlesnake says—­and after a while nobody does get in his way.  But he must be a lonely creature.”

“Do you think,” asked the boy oddly,—­“do you think I am really like that,—­like a rattlesnake?”

Adam gave his mellow laugh.  “No, I don’t.  I think you are just a poor human.  I was always powerfully fond of you, Lewis,—­and I never could abide a rattler!  There’s the moon, and it’s a long march to-morrow, and folks sit up late in Richmond!  Unroll the blankets, and let’s to bed.”

The boy obeyed, and the two lay down with the fire between them.  The man’s thoughts went back to the Mississippi, to cane-brakes and bayous and long levees; and the boy’s mind perused the road before him.