The boy's generous enthusiasm was awakened at once. His ordinary school tasks and home duties no longer looked commonplace, and were no longer distasteful to him. They were but incidents in a general plan of usefulness, and he performed them with an air of cheerfulness that pleased his teacher and delighted his parents. He volunteered to help his father in the fields, and while but a boy in years, he yet performed the work of a man. In fact, he had discovered that every duty of life has its heroic side, and needs only the impulse of high and noble motives to be invested with dignity and interest. Meanwhile, he did not neglect his studies. The idea of intellectual culture was no longer a mere abstraction. Books were not only what they always had been--reservoirs of knowledge, alluring to his imagination, and fascinating to his mind--but they were now looked upon as levers, with which he was to move the world. Knowledge _now_ meant the means whereby, in the days to come, he was to acquire the power to make his father and mother comfortable for the balance of their lives; and to surround his sisters with those luxuries which go far towards making existence a thing of grace and refinement. When, therefore, he worked during the warm days of summer, aiding his father in the care of the farm, the summer evenings found him poring earnestly over his books--practical and useful ones now--and the harvest once gathered, he was back again in his old place at school, where he studied steadily and hard. His teacher, Allen Wight, looked on and was satisfied. And yet Willard was a wild boy--as wild as any in the school. His relish for fun and frolic was as keen as ever, but it was now subordinated to his judgment. His practical jokes were fewer, and the peculiarities of his father no longer furnished him with a subject for their perpetration. Now and then, however, the old exuberance of mischief _would_ break out, and upon one occasion his grandfather became its victim. As that mosaic styled "character" is nothing more than an aggregate of just such trivial things, we trust our readers will pardon us if we relate the incident in point. When Willard was over nine years of age, his father moved from the Old Homestead and purchased a place named the Goodrich Farm, where he opened a country store. The venture proved to be an unfortunate one, and, after a series of pecuniary vicissitudes, he left it, and, at the period to which we refer, was the occupant of a farm known in that section as the Davis Place. This farm and the Glazier Homestead occupied positions upon opposite sides of the same public road--the former being one mile nearer the town of Fullersville. Meantime, the Homestead was occupied and cultivated by Jabez Glazier, the grandfather of Willard, and upon certain occasions the boy was sent over to stay for a few days at that place, to help the old gentleman in many little ways connected with its cultivation.