They were a strange medley, my books:  some belonging to my step-mother, and others borrowed or begged from the neighbors, or brought to me by the men, with whom I was a favorite, and who knew my passion for reading.  My mother’s books were mostly religious:  a life of Brainerd, the missionary, whose adventures roused within me a gleam of religious enthusiasm; some sermons of the leading Methodist clergy, which, to her horror, I pronounced stupid; and a torn copy of the “Imitation of Christ,” a book which she threatened to take from me, because she believed it had something to do with the Papists, but to which, for that very reason, I clung with a tenacity and read with an earnestness which brought at last its own beautiful fruits.  Then, there was the “Scottish Chiefs,” a treasure-house of delight to me,—­two or three trashy novels, given me by Tom Salyers, of which my mother knew nothing,—­and (the only poetry I had ever seen) a song-book, which had, scattered among its vulgarisms and puerilities, some gems of Burns and Moore.  These my natural, unvitiated taste had singled out, and I would croon them over to myself, set them to a tune of my own composing, and half sing, half chant them, when at work out-of-doors, till my mother declared I was going crazy.

This morning I did not read.  I sat looking down into the water from my perch, carrying on the inward discussion of the night before, and wishing that breakfast-time were come, that I might try my strength and show that I was not to be put down by any assumption of superiority, when suddenly a voice near me made me start so that I almost lost my balance.  Mr. Hammond was standing beneath.  He laughed, and held out his hand to help me down; but I sprang past him and was on my way to the house, when suddenly my brave resolutions came back to my mind, and I stood still with a feeling of defiance.  I wondered what he would dare to say.  Would he tell me how stupid he thought us all, how like the very pigs we lived? or would he describe his own grand house and the great places he had seen?  I scowled up sullenly.

“Will you tell me where to find a towel, that I may wash my face here by the river-side?”

I laughed aloud, and with that laugh fled my sullenness.  He looked a little puzzled, but went on,—­

“I went to bed so early that I cannot sleep any longer; and if I could only find some way of getting across the river, I could get things under way a little before my men come up.”

There were ways, then, in which I could help him,—­he was not so immeasurably above me,—­and down went my defiant spirit.  The towel, a crash roller, luckily clean, was brought at once, and, gathering courage as I stood by and saw him finish his washing, I said,—­

“I can scull you over the river in a few minutes, if you will go in our skiff.”

“You? can you manage that shell of a thing? will your father let you take it, Miss Boarders?”