There was a great deal wrong with the world young Peter thought. Much that could be better. He had never noticed before he went away to high school how his father and the hired man bullied his mother with their laughing banter, nor how cluttered the parlor was with its stuffed birds. Momentarily he hated every inch of it: the stink of the barnyards, the cruelties of birth and death forever taking place about the farm; Gus the lecherous hired hand whispering to him of secret pleasures,--Gus forever proclaiming his hatred for women yet tearing out the underwear-clad wenches in the mail-order catalogues to hide in his bureau drawer. Then with the inconsistency of youth in springtime Peter forgot his troubles upon seeing Lake Koshkonong spread out before him, flecked with whitecaps in the sun. He forgot his hatred for school, his contempt for farming. He cut himself a thorn stick and swished it through the deepening grass, whistled "Alexander's Ragtime Band," and with an awkward attempt at the tango whirled and bent and thumped his feet holding his visionary partner with a grace which he imagined would have shamed Vernon Castle. He clapped for an encore, bowed deeply to the girl, then feeling in his pockets found fish-hooks, sinkers, and dead night crawlers. "I'll go fishing catfish," he thought with excitement. "I'll get me some dead minnies, some rotten liver, and some clams." Swinging along the lane, throwing stones at sparrows and adventurous woodchucks, he came at last to the back pasture covered with hazel bushes, sumac and thorn-apple trees. He made his way along the cowpaths calling the ponies, looking behind the clumping elderberry bushes until at last he came upon them. The little Admiral ran up whinnying to nuzzle for the sugar lumps Peter usually carried, and there beyond stood the patient mare guarding her new-born colt, the wickedest-looking little fellow who ever tried to scamper on unsteady legs. He had been licked as clean as down and his small black hooves were as bright as jewels in the wet grass. The mare regarded him with troubled eyes and every now and again ran her wide nostrils over his flanks tenderly. So this was why the mare hadn't come down to the barnyard that morning! Peter slipped his arms under the warm pony colt to carry him home. The mare patiently followed. CHAPTER II 1 Stud Brailsford stopped his team of sorrel mares beside the old mill and blacksmith shop, led Jinny in through the wide doorway and tied her to a wrought-iron ring worn with sixty-five years of friction. He lit the charcoal in the forge, pumped the ancient foot-bellows, and buried a shining shoe in the bright coals. "This ain't going to hurt you a bit," he told the nervous mare. "Your ma, and your ma's ma, and a long ways back of that got nice new shoes in this same smithy."