Order being restored, Tommy was moved to the east side of the room. Here the view was downhill over the lowlands, ending at a great corn-field that belonged to Tommy’s grandfather. The corn was yellow in the ear, but still standing. A flock of crows that had a roost in the swampy millwoods knew all about this corn-field and considered it as their own property, for had they not superintended its planting, helped thin out the seed lest it should grow too thick, and croaked and quavered directions to old man Todd and his horses every time they ploughed and hoed? Now, guided by a careful old leader who sat on a dead sycamore top and gave warning (for all crow flocks have such a chief), they were beginning to attack the ripened ears, the scarecrows placed at intervals that had been of some use in the early season having now lost the little influence they possessed and fallen into limp heaps, like unfortunate tramps asleep by the wayside. So every time the crows came over, Tommy would stretch up in his seat and finally slip out of it entirely and, hanging half out of the window, shake his fist at them, all the time uttering dire threats of what he would do if he only had his father’s shot-gun. For these reasons, Friday morning saw him seated in the middle of the room with the older girls and sharing the double desk with Sarah Barnes. Now Sarah thought that Tommy was the cleverest boy she had ever seen, and Sarah had visited in Centre Village in Hattertown, and Bridgeton, been twice to the Oldtown County Fair, and would have gone to New York once with her Aunt Jane if measles had not prevented; so that her friends thought, for thirteen, she was quite a travelled lady. Tommy also considered her favourably and had been heard to say that she was not bad for a girl; yet, to be put in the middle seats with the girls he considered an insult to his years, and he was sulky and brooded mischief all the morning. In reality Tommy was not a bad boy in any way. What he wanted was plenty of occupation for his mind and body to work at. Miss Wilde knew this and tried to give him as many little things to do as possible. It was Tommy who had charge of the new cage rat-trap of shiny copper wire, in which it was hoped the field rats might be caught, that, as soon as cool weather came, gnawed their way in through the loose floor boards and sometimes destroyed the books, and, as Sarah Barnes declared (whose duty it was to keep the wells filled), drank the ink. Tommy also kept the water-pail full and tended the big wood-stove in winter; but none of these tasks seemed to touch the restless spot and he could think out more puzzling questions in a day than the whole school board could have answered in a week, and then, as Sarah Barnes once said, “Tommy Todd’s questions never seem to stay answered.”