"First you know, Merrick, he will rear up behind and send you into the middle of next week. See, he won't stir when I punch him with the fork handle. He is just getting ready to do something terrible, and when he does start, something will happen. Oh, how he kind of swells up." "I'm not afraid. Just twist his tail a little, twist it harder. Hey-hey, here I go--look out! Gordon, stop him--whoa-whoa--Oh, Gordon, where have I been? What did he do? Where am I now? and where are my pants?" "Why, Merrick, just as you were talking to me, he hollered 'Bah,' and started. First your legs flew up and before you caught your balance he stopped suddenly, threw up his head and his horns caught your pants and ripped them clean off, and you took the most awful plunge. You actually flew through the air about ten feet, like a quail, and then disappeared in this manure pond. I thought he had killed you. Say, are you almost dead?" "Dead, no, but where are my pants and did anybody see us? Did Charlotte Lewis and Mariva Shepherd come this way from school?" "No, they did not, but see your pants are on his horns now. Oh, Merrick, your eyes, and ears, and hair are just chuck full. Do you think you are hurt inwardly?" "Hurt? No, I'm not hurt. Gee-whiz, I'm glad the school girls weren't coming along about then. Say, Gordon, lets run for the brook and I will dive, head-foremost, right into the old deep hole, and when I come up I will be span clean." "Gracious, Merrick, but there is ice floating down now and aren't your legs cold?" "Cold? No. Pa says there are lots of people in the world who wear no pants--say, Gordon, now listen--if you won't ever tell of this to no living soul I will do all the chores: milking, feeding the hogs, cleaning the stables, building the fire mornings, and I'll be hanged if I don't help you lie yourself out of every mean scrape you get into in the next ten years." [Illustration: ALWAYS WELCOME AT SISTER CAROLINE'S WABBAQUASSETT HOME. LEFT TO RIGHT. CAROLINE, MARTHA, WALTON, WARREN, EVERETT, LUCIUS.] SCHOOL DAYS Nearby was a backwoods school which was called the White Birch, where about eighty scholars met in winter to fit themselves for future eminence. Here it was that life's troubles began with me. The mode of punishment in those days for a boy was to draw him over the master's knee and spank him, and I am quite sure I got more floggings than all the other seventy-nine scholars together. Tom Wheelock often spanked me so furiously that the rising dust often made the other scholars think he was setting me on fire.