The Gaither boy grew to be very friendly with Joe Maxwell, and he turned out to be a very pleasant companion. He was fifteen years old, but looked younger, and although he had no book-learning, he was very intelligent, having picked up a great deal of the wholesome knowledge that Nature keeps in store for those who make her acquaintance. He could read a little, and he could write his name, which he took great pride in doing, using a stick for a pen and a bed of sand for a copy-book. Walking along through the fields or woods, he would pause wherever the rains had washed the sand together, and write his name in full in letters that seemed to be wrestling with each other--“James K. Polk Gaither.” As there was another James in his family, he was called Jim-Polk Gaither. His friendship was worth a great deal to Joe Maxwell, for there was not a bird in the woods nor a tree that he did not know the name of and something of its peculiarities, and he was familiar with every road and bypath in all the country around. He knew where the wild strawberries grew, and the chincapins and chestnuts, and where the muscadines, or, as he called them, the “bullaces,” were ripest. The birds could not hide their nests from him, nor the wild creatures escape him. He had a tame buzzard that sometimes followed him about in his rambles. He set traps for flying squirrels, and tamed them as soon as his hands touched them. He handled snakes fearlessly, and his feats with them were astounding to the town lad until Joe discovered that the serpents were not of the poisonous species. In handling highland moccasins and spreading adders, Jim-Polk confined his feats to seizing them by their tails as they ran and snapping their heads off. Whenever he killed one in this way he always hung it on a bush or tree in order, as he said, to bring rain. When it failed to rain, his explanation was that as a snake never dies until sundown, no matter how early in the morning it may be killed, it had twisted and writhed until it fell from the limb or bush on which it was hung. Jim-Polk had many gifts and acquirements that interested Joe Maxwell. Once when the two lads were walking through the woods they saw a pair of hawks some distance away. Jim-Polk motioned to Joe to hide under a hawthorn bush. Then, doubling his handkerchief before his mouth, he began to make a curious noise--a series of smothered exclamations that sounded like hoo!--hoo!--hoo-hoo! He was imitating the cry of the swamp owl, which Joe Maxwell had never heard. The imitation must have been perfect, for immediately there was a great commotion in the woods. The smaller birds fluttered away and disappeared; but the two hawks, re-enforced by a third, came flying toward the noise with their feathers ruffled and screaming with indignation. They meant war. Jim-Polk continued his muffled cries, until presently the boys heard a crow cawing in the distance. “Now you'll see fun,” said young Gaither. “Just keep right still.”