It took us less than an hour to get acquainted with some of the boys in the village; we challenged them to wrestle, run races, climb trees, and the like, and in a day or two we felt at home, care-free and happy, notwithstanding that our family was so widely divided. When father returned, he told us that he had found fine land for a farm in sunny open woods on the side of a lake, and that a team of three yoke of oxen, with a big wagon, was coming to haul us to Mr. Gray's place.

We enjoyed the strange ten-mile ride through the woods very much, wondering how the great oxen could be so strong and wise and tame as to pull so heavy a load with no other harness than a chain and a crooked piece of wood on their necks, and how they could sway so obediently to right and left, past roadside trees and stumps, when the driver said haw and gee. At Mr. Gray's house father again left us for a few days, to build a shanty on the quarter-section he had selected four or five miles to the westward. Meanwhile we enjoyed our freedom as usual, wandering in the fields and meadows, looking at the trees and flowers, snakes and birds and squirrels. With the help of the nearest neighbors the little shanty was built in less than a day, after the rough bur-oak logs for the walls and the white-oak boards for the floor and roof were got together.

Soon after our arrival in the woods, some one added a cat and puppy to the animals father had bought. The pup was a common cur, though very uncommon to us: a black-and-white short-haired mongrel that we named Watch. We always gave him a pan of milk in the evening just before we knelt in family worship, while daylight still lingered in the shanty; and instead of attending

to the prayers, I too often studied the small wild creatures playing round us. Field-mice scampered about the cabin as if it had been built for them alone, and their performances were very amusing. About dusk, on one of the calm, sultry nights so grateful to moths and beetles, when the puppy was lapping his milk, and we were on our knees, in through the door came a heavy, broadshouldered beetle about as big as a mouse; and after droning and booming round the cabin two or three times, the pan of milk, showing white in the gloaming, caught its eyes and, taking good aim, it alighted with a slanting, glinting plash in the middle of the pan, like a duck alighting in a lake. Baby Watch, having never before seen anything like that beetle, started back, gazing in dumb astonishment and fear at the black sprawling monster trying to swim. Recovering somewhat from his fright, he began to bark at the creature, and ran round and round his milk-pan, wouf-woufing, gurring, growling, like an old dog barking at a wild-cat or a bear. The natural astonishment and curiosity of that boy-dog getting his first entomological lesson in this wonderful world was so immoderately funny, that I had great difficulty in keeping from laughing out loud.

Watch never became a first-rate scholar, though he learned more than any stranger would judge him capable of, was a bold, faithful watch-dog, and in his prime a grand fighter, able to whip all the other dogs in the neighborhood. Comparing him with ourselves, we soon learned that, although he could not read books, he could read faces, was a good judge of character, always knew what was going on and what we were about to do, and liked to help us. We could run almost as fast as he

could, see about as far, and perhaps hear as well, but in the sense of smell his nose was incomparably better than

ours.

One winter morning when the ground was covered with snow, I noticed that, when he was yawning and stretching himself, after leaving his bed, he suddenly caught the scent of something that excited him, went round the corner of the house, and looked intently to the westward across a tongue of land that we called West Bank, eagerly questioned the air with quivering nostrils, and bristled up as if he felt sure that there was something dangerous in that direction and had actually caught sight of it. Then he ran toward the Bank, and I followed him, curious to see what his nose had discovered.

The top of the Bank commanded a view of the north end of our lake and meadow, and when we got there we saw an Indian hunter, armed with a long spear, going about from one muskrat cabin to another, approaching cautiously, careful to make no noise, and then suddenly thrusting his spear down through the house. If wellaimed, the spear went through the poor beaver-rat as it lay cuddled up in the snug nest it had made for itself in the fall with so much far-seeing care; and when the hunter felt the spear quivering, he dug down the mossy hut with his tomahawk and secured his prey the flesh for food, and the skin to sell for a dime or so. This was a clear object lesson on dogs' keenness of scent. That Indian was more than half a mile away across a wooded ridge. Had the hunter been a white man, I suppose Watch would not have noticed him.

When he was about six or seven years old he not only became cross, so that he would do only what he liked,

but he fell on evil ways, and was accused by the neighbors who had settled round us of catching and devouring whole broods of chickens, some of them only a day or two out of the shell. We never imagined he would do anything so grossly undoglike. He never did at home. But several of the neighbors declared over and over again that they had caught him in the act, and insisted that he must be shot. At last, in spite of tearful protests, he was condemned and executed. Father examined the poor fellow's stomach in search of sure evidence, and discovered the heads of eight chickens that he had devoured at his last meal. So poor Watch was killed simply because his taste for chickens was too much like

our own.

The old Scotch fashion of whipping for every act of disobedience or of simple, playful forgetfulness was still kept up in the wilderness, and of course many of those whippings fell upon me. Most of them were outrageously severe, and utterly barren of fun. But here is one that was nearly all fun.

Father was busy hauling lumber for the frame house that was to be got ready for the arrival of my mother, sisters, and brother, left behind in Scotland. One morning, when he was ready to start for another load, his oxwhip was not to be found. He asked me if I knew anything about it. I told him I did n't know where it was; but a Scotch conscience compelled me to confess that, when I was playing with it, I had tied it to Watch's tail, and that he ran away, dragging it through the grass, and came back without it. "It must have slipped off his tail," I said, and so I did n't know where it was.

This honest, straightforward little story made father

so angry that he exclaimed with heavy foreboding emphasis, "The very deevil's in that boy!" David, who had been playing with me, and was perhaps about as responsible for the loss of the whip as I was, said never a word, for he was always prudent enough to hold his tongue when the parental weather was stormy, and so escaped nearly all punishment. And strange to say, this time I also escaped, all except a terrible scolding, though the thrashing weather seemed darker than ever.

As if unwilling to let the sun see the shameful job, father took me into the cabin where the storm was to fall, and sent David to the woods for a switch. While he was out selecting the switch, father put in the spare time sketching my play-wickedness in awful colors, and, of course, referred again and again to the place prepared for bad boys. In the midst of this terrible word-storm, dreading most the impending thrashing, I whimpered that I was only playing because I could n't help it; did n't know I was doing wrong; would n't do it again, and so forth. When this miserable dialogue was about exhausted, father became impatient with my brother for taking so much time to find the switch; and I was equally so, for I wanted to have the thing over and done with.

At last, in came David, a picture of open-hearted innocence, solemnly dragging a young bur-oak sapling, and handed the end of it to father, saying it was the best switch he could find. It was an awfully heavy one, about two and a half inches thick at the butt and ten feet long, almost big enough for a fence-pole. There was n't room enough in the cabin to swing it, and the moment I saw it I burst out laughing in the midst of my