"He is a little boy with a bad temper," said aunt Louise, frowning severely at Horace.--If she had had her way, I don't know but every little boy in town would have been tied to a bed-post by a clothes-line. As I have already said, aunt Louise was not remarkably fond of children, and when they were naughty it was hard for her to forgive them. She disliked little Peter; but she never stopped to think that he had a cross and ignorant mother, who managed him so badly that he did not care about trying to be good. Mrs. Grant seldom talked with him about God and the Saviour; she never read to him from the Bible, nor told him to say his prayers. Mrs. Clifford answered Horace that she did not wish him to go into the woods, and that was all that she thought it necessary to say. Horace, at the time, had no idea of disobeying his mother; but not long afterwards he happened to go into the kitchen, where his grandmother was making beer. "What do you make it of, grandma?" said he. "Of molasses and warm water and yeast." "But what gives the taste to it?" "O, I put in spruce, or boxberry, or sarsaparilla." "But see here, grandma: wouldn't you like to have me go in the woods 'someplace,' and dig roots for you?" "Yes, indeed, my dear," said she innocently; "and if you should go, pray get some wintergreen, by all means." Horace's heart gave a wicked throb of delight. If some one wanted him to go _after_ something, of course he _ought_ to go; for his mother had often told him he must try to be useful. Strolling into the woods with Peter Grant, just for fun, was very different from going in soberly to dig up roots for grandma. He thought of it all the way out to the gate. To be sure he might go and ask his mother again, but "what was the use, when he knew certain sure she'd be willing? Besides, wasn't the baby crying, so he mustn't go in the room?" These reasons sounded very well; but they could be picked in pieces, and Horace knew it. It was only when the baby was asleep that he must keep out of the chamber; and, as for being sure that his mother would let him go into the woods, the truth was, he dared not ask her, for he knew she would say, "No." He found Peter Grant lounging near the school-house, scribbling his name on the clean white paint under one of the windows. Peter's black eyes twinkled. "Going, ain't you, cap'n! dog and all? But where's your basket? Wait, and I'll fetch one." "There," said he, coming back again, "I got that out of the stable there at the tavern; Billy Green is hostler: Billy knows me." "Well, Peter, come ahead." "I don't believe you know your way in these ere woods," returned Peter, with an air of importance. "I'll go fust. It's a mighty long stretch, 'most up to Canada; but I could find _my_ way in the dark. I never got lost anywheres yet!" "Poh! nor I either," Horace was about to say; but remembering his adventure in Cleveland, he drowned the words in a long whistle.