Derry lay twenty-two miles to the west of Amesville and it required almost an hour for the branch line train to reach the little settlement. Tom descended from the car amidst the clatter of empty milk-cans being put off on the platform of the small station. Uncle Israel Bowles’s farm lay nearly a mile away, and Tom, whose feet were sore from the unaccustomed tramping of city pavements, looked about for a lift. But of the two buggies and one farm wagon in sight none was bound his way, and so he crossed to the dusty road that led northward and set out through the warm, still end of a September day. There was no hurry and so he went slowly, limping a little now and then, and thinking busily of the new life to begin on Monday. He wondered whether he would get on satisfactorily with Cummings and Wright, whether the lessons at high school would prove terribly hard, whether he would find any friends amongst the boys there. And finally, with an uneasy sensation, he wondered how long the small amount of money he had saved up during the past two years would last him in Amesville. What experience he had had of city prices for food alarmed him when he thought of satisfying that very healthy appetite of his! Well, he would just have to do the best he could, and if doing the best he could meant going hungry sometimes he’d go hungry! At all events, that money had to last him until next summer, when, either through some more advantageous arrangement with Cummings and Wright or by hiring himself again to one of the neighbouring farmers, he could once more put himself in funds. These reflections and resolves brought him in sight of the farm, and the next moment the joyful barking of Star, his collie dog, announced his advent. Star came leaping and bounding through the gate and down the road to meet him. “Hello, old chap!” said Tom, patting the dog’s head. “I guess I’m going to miss you more’n anything or anybody when I go away. I wish I could take you with me. I just do. But I guess you’d pretty near starve to death over there to Amesville. There wouldn’t be any buttermilk, Star, and there wouldn’t be any corn-bread, either, I guess. Well, I’ll be back on Saturdays to see you, anyway. What you been doing all day? Did you miss me?” Star replied dog-fashion that he had missed his master very much, and, by licking his hand and doing his best to lick his face as well, accorded him a royal welcome home. Aunt Patty--she was no real relation, but Tom had always called her aunt--was setting the table for supper as he went in. She was a small, wrinkled little old woman, with a sharp tongue and a warm heart, and had kept house for Uncle Israel for nearly twenty years. She paused with a salt-cellar in each hand and viewed Tom and Star critically.