"Very well, Bill, if you feel that way about it, of course I'll try. But you haven't told me his name as yet." "I was thinkin' o' that," the boy answered. Then he took from his pocket a home-made gum-wood case, and opening it, took out a small piece of paper and handed it to Hamilton. "Be keerful of it," he said, "that paper tears mighty easy." Hamilton smoothed the paper out on the palm of his hand, and looked at it carefully. It was a "copy," merely of pothooks, done in lead pencil, the strokes wavering and of differing slopes, and the whole so smudged as scarcely to be recognizable But, down in the corner, written in ink, in a firm, bold hand, were the words, "Very Good, Gregory Sinclair." Hamilton copied the name into his notebook and, refolding the paper as carefully as possible in the same folds, he handed it to the barefooted boy standing on the road beside his horse's head. "Did you-all read it?" he asked. "Yes," said Hamilton. "Did you-all see that he said 'Very Good'?" "'Very Good' was what was written," agreed Hamilton, thinking of the wavering and smudged pothooks. "I c'n do better now," the boy said quietly, "an' I've been tryin' jes' as hard as though Teacheh was in yonder schoolhouse. But thar's no one to write 'Very Good' on 'em any mo', an' I reckon thar an't goin' to be. But I'm trustin' that you'll fin' him an' you'll tell him that he an't fo'gotten." Without a word of farewell, the boy struck into the woods and was lost to sight. The two lads started on their way, but they had not ridden a hundred yards when they heard a hail; looking back, they saw the mountain boy standing on a point of the ridge; and echoing down to them came the lonely cry: "Fin' him, an' tell him he an't fo'gotten." CHAPTER III A MANUFACTORY OF RIFLES Settling himself comfortably in the train for his long journey to the capital, one of the first things that Hamilton did was to take from his pocket the little carving that had been given him by the mountain lad and put it away carefully in his grip. Examining it closely as he did so, the boy was astonished to note the fineness of the work, and he realized that it must have taken Bill Wilsh all the spare moments of a long winter to finish it. The work was all the more surprising, Hamilton thought, since it had been done just with a single tool, a common pocketknife, and was yet as fine and delicate as though carved with a set of costly tools. He made up his mind to buy a set and send them to Bill Wilsh with the first pay that he got from his Census Bureau work.