"Well, the truth of it is, I do, for the last teacher came and went this way. And he told me like this: 'The thing opened up all right, plenty of rags, but that evening some of the young fellows came to me and said that unless I brought some sort of treat the next morning they would put me in the creek; said that they hated to do it, but that time-honored customs must be observed. I didn't bring any treat and I went into the creek. Then I left.' Yes, that's what he said, and I concluded that as for me I would rather be here. It isn't so lively, but it is a good deal dryer. But you can't get there to-night. Better take a shake-down here with me till morning, and then you may catch some farmer going that way with a wagon." I thanked him for this courtesy, and readily accepted it. And the next morning, with my trunk on my shoulder, I set out upon what I conceived to be my career in life. CHAPTER II. The month was April, and the day was blithe, with no blotch in the sky. The country was rough, the road was pebbly in the bottoms and flinty on the hills, but there was a leaping joy everywhere; in the woods where the blue-jays were shouting, down the branch where the woodpecker tapped in an oak tree's sounding board. It must have been a low-hanging ambition to be thrilled with the prospect of teaching school, or was it buoyant health that made me happy? I eased down my trunk, and boyishly threw stones away off into an echoing hollow. A rabbit ran out into the road and stopped, and with a stone I knocked it over. Tenderly I picked it up, felt its fluttering heart, and groaned inwardly when the little heart was stilled. I called myself a murderer, an Anglo-Saxon brute, to kill a harmless creature merely upon a devilish impulse, and in the gravelly ground I began to dig a grave with my knife, and I was so much taken up with this work and with my grief, that I heeded not the approach of a wagon. "What are you doing there?" some one called. I looked up. A farmer had stopped his blowing horses and was looking at me. "I'm digging a grave," I answered. "Diggin' a grave? Why, who's dead?" "A rabbit." He moved uneasily, and gave me a searching look. And I saw that he took me to be insane. "I killed the poor thing," I explained, "killed it out of mere wantonness, and I am so grief-stricken that I am going to do the best I can for the poor thing--going to give it a Christian burial." The man laughed. "I wish you would kill the last one of them," he said. "Set out as nice a young orchard as you ever saw last winter, and the devilish rabbits killed every one of the trees." "Then I am not so much of a murderer after all," I replied. "I might have known that rabbits are not altogether harmless. How far do you go on this road?" "About ten miles." "Will you let me ride with you?" "Yes, be glad to have you."