understand.  The teacher at the public school had told him that he was far ahead of his years, and yet they had taken him away when he was doing his level best, and put him to dragging the land, and gathering the peanuts, and carrying the truck to market, and marking the sheep with red paint, and bringing up the cows, and doing all the odd, innumerable jobs they could devise.  He let the ropes fall for an instant and dug his fist into his eye; then he took them up again and went on stolidly.  At last the sun came out boldly above the hill, and the hollows were flooded with light.  In the centre of the field the boy’s head glowed like some large red insect.  A hawk, winging slowly above him, looked down as if uncertain of his species, and fluttered off indifferently.

At six o’clock his stepmother came to the back door and called him to breakfast.

When the meal was over Amos Burr went out to the field, and Nicholas was sent to drive the sheep to the pasture.  With vigorous wavings of a piece of brushwood, and many darts from right to left, he succeeded finally in driving them across the road and through the gate on the opposite side, after which he returned to assist his stepmother about the house.  Not until nine o’clock, when he had seen the Battle children going up the road, was he free to set off at a run for Kingsborough.

As he sped breathlessly along, past the wastelands, into the woods, down the road to the hillside, and down the hillside to the road again, he went too rapidly for thought.  The fresh air brushed his heated face gently, and, at the edge of the wood, where the shallow puddles lingered, myriads of blue and yellow butterflies scattered into variegated clumps of colour at his approach, darting from the moist heaps of last year’s leaves to the shining rivulets in the wheel ruts by the way.  A partridge whistled from the yellowing green of the wheat, and a rabbit stole noiselessly from the sassafras in the ditch and shot shy glances of alarm; but he did not turn his head, and his hand held no ready stone.

Though he had run half the way, when at last he reached the judge’s house, and stood before the little office in the garden where the school was held, his courage misgave him, and he leaned, trembling, against the arbour where a grapevine grew.  The sound of voices floated out to him, mingled with bright, girlish laughter, and, looking through the open window, he saw the light curls of a little girl against the darker head of a boy.  He choked suddenly with shyness, and would have hesitated there until the morning was over had not the judge’s old servant, Caesar, espied him from the dining-room window.

“Look yer, boy, what you doin’ dar?” he demanded suspiciously, and then called to some one inside the house.  “Marse George, dat ar Burr boy is a-loungin’ roun’ yo’ yawd.”

The judge did not respond, but the tutor came to the door of the office and intercepted the boy’s retreat.  He was a pale, long-faced young man in spectacles, with weak, blue eyes and a short, thin moustache.  His name was Graves, and he regarded what he called the judge’s “quixotism” with condescending good-nature.