This boy was, in general, very good-natured. He was ingenious in making whistles, and setting snares and traps for quails, partridges, and rabbits; in cutting fish-poles, attaching the hook to the line, digging worms for bait, and putting the bait on the hook. He had also a knack of putting the hook and line into the water in such an insinuating manner, that he always caught more and bigger fish than any one else. He was a dexterous swimmer, expert in strapping skates, formed the best flying kites in the village, made bows and arrows to perfection, and could gather more chestnuts, butternuts, and shagbarks, than any boy in the town. All these various accomplishments rendered Bill Keeler a delightful companion to me, who, having been brought up in the city, had little acquaintance with those arts, so well understood by boys in the country. He was particularly devoted to me, partly because of his good nature, and partly because my uncle was so indulgent to me, that all around had caught his habit of yielding to my wishes. But although Bill was thus clever, and thus obliging to me, he was so restless and enterprising, as always to be in some scrape or other. One day, he had seen the burrow of a woodchuck in a field behind the house of Mistress Sally St. John. So he took a large fox-trap, and sunk it to the level of the ground, in the very path where the woodchuck was accustomed to go. He then sprinkled it over with earth, so as to make it appear as if no trap was there. Next morning, pretty early, Bill went to see his trap, expecting of course to find that he had caught the woodchuck. But what was his dismay, on approaching the place, to find Sally St. John herself, standing bolt upright, screaming and piping with all her might, and throwing up her hands in despair! Bill went near enough to see that she had one foot fast in the trap. He then turned about, and left the poor school-mistress to be extricated by her neighbors. For this Bill got a sound flogging from my uncle, but he felt well compensated by being released from school for a month; for, during that period, poor Sally was too lame to resume her duties at the schoolhouse. My companion’s next exploit was equally serious. If there was anything on earth that he loved better than another, it was gunpowder. Why he had such a fancy for it, I cannot tell, unless because it was a noisy, tearing, dangerous thing, like himself. But be this as it may, he spent more than half the little money he could get in buying it. Every day he was touching off some old pistol-barrel, rammed full of powder; or he was trying to split a pepperidge log with it, by filling some knot-hole, and exploding it. But his greatest delight was to get my uncle’s gun, one of the real old “King’s arms,” taken at the battle of Princeton, and go forth with as big a feeling in him as that which inspired Nimrod, the first hunter that history tells about.