The world was green on this birthday of his, for the spring had come early. The snow had gone from the mountains, the young maple-leaves were fluttering in the forest, the fields were green, the golden sunshine flooded the lake. There was a light breeze, and Fessenden unfurled his sails and thought into the sympathetic soul of his canoe. “Perhaps, on the whole, I like the idea,” he admitted. “With one or two exceptions, our great men have risen from the ranks--were hired men, grocery-store clerks, born in log-cabins, and all that sort of thing. To be sure, my favorites happen to be the ones who were not; still it seems to be the proper thing in this country, and as I intend to be a great man, old girl, I am contented to start at the proper place--no log-hut could be uglier than the Nettlebeck farm-house, and I am going to be a hired man, all right. I can’t help being thankful that it isn’t to be a grocery-store clerk. What am I to be? What am I to be? Can’t you give me a hint?” He laid his ear to the spot where he fancied the heart of _Pocahontas_ beat warmly, and for him alone. “When I read the life of a great warrior, I want to be one. Upon some other occasion I want to be a great statesman and orator, and spout the seventh-of-March speech in the woods, as exalted as if the world listened--and feel like a fool afterwards. Write? Morris says there are too many writers now, and that my brain is that of the man of action. He certainly seems to know more about it than I do, and as for you, my beauty, you’re a selfish hussy. When your sails are up you think of nothing but filling your belly with wind.” IX Fessenden was so preoccupied that even the voices and laughter of girls did not attract his attention for some moments. He was inserting the little nickel troughs called spiles into the trees of the maple orchard, and hanging the red buckets beneath to catch the sap. Dolf was in the sugar shanty nearby, scouring out the vats, for the boiling would begin to-morrow, and maple-sugar was an industry from which the Nettlebecks derived a yearly income of several hundred dollars. This year Fessenden, who was now seventeen and tired of being a farm-hand, had stipulated that he was to work on shares, arguing that if he did two-thirds of the work he was entitled to at least one-third of the profits. Nettlebeck, after some demur, and a long growl over his pipe one evening, capitulated when young Abbott threatened to stake off a claim on government land and in partnership with Jeff Hunter build his own vats. Fessenden was feeling much elated over his rise in life, and his imagination was running riot in a great future to which sugar should be the stepping-stone--he had recently read several articles on self-made men in magazines sent to Morris--when his house of cards came tumbling down, and the future financier rose from the ruins, a blushing, shivering, gibbering swain.