Often in the weeks that followed, when Penelope and I roamed over the fields, when her merriment rang out the highest, and her laughter was so free that it seemed she was forgetting the clearing and the days when her sole companion was the gaunt and bitter-tongued Professor--often then I would hear again the stamp of my father's foot and his stern avowal, and to me it was as though he were conspiring against me in seeking to send away the only comrade I had ever known, and would leave me to pass my days in the wake of James. I abhorred James now. I had come to know the pleasure of real companionship, and looked back to the old days wondering how I had endured them, and with dread to those that seemed to lie ahead. Penelope was a girl, to be sure, but she was not like the insipid creatures of the village who were held in such contempt by boys of my age. Where I dared to go she followed. Did I climb to the highest girder in the barn and balance myself on the dizzy height, she was with me. Did I venture to run the wildest rapids of the creek in the clumsy box which I called my canoe, she trusted her newest frock and ribbons to my seamanship. And better than all was the respect and admiration in which she held me. To her I was no longer the frightened, shivering boy of the mountain brook. I was in a land I knew and followed its familiar ways without fear. One day she saw me tumble from the bridge into the deep swimming-hole, and while she cried out in fright I swam nonchalantly ashore, a full dozen strokes, and as I dried myself in the sun I reproved her for her little faith in me. On another I presented her to old Jerry Schimmel, sitting, a brown, dishevelled heap on his cobbler's bench, and from my accustomed seat by his stove, in a voice cast into the echoing hollows of my chest, I commanded him to tell us how he had fought in the battle of Gettysburg. From my familiarity with the stirring incidents of the fight as Jerry described them, Penelope thought that I must have had a part in it too, and my modest disclaimer hardly convinced her that I had not been a companion-in-arms of this battle-worn veteran. What days those were! Even the fear that my father would find the missing Professor grew less. They drifted into weeks, and weeks into months, and there was no sign of the fugitive. I found myself looking into the future as though in the quiet evening I were turning my eyes over the valley to the west and the golden clouds hovering there. I dealt only with results. I crossed mountains without climbing them, and always Penelope shared my glory with me. I look back now smiling at that boyish self-reliance. Mountains have been crossed, but with what heart-breaking struggles? Battles have been won, but with what a toll of suffering?