"And now," the lecturer said, by way of climax, "would you not like to see a picture of that mighty hunter who lived in the great days of the young American republic and crossed Kentucky in the great days of the pioneers? And would you not also like to see a picture of the exquisite and only bird that bears the name of our State--the Kentucky Warbler?" He passed over to them a portrait engraving of Alexander Wilson in the dress of a gentleman of his time, his fowling-piece on his forearm. And along with this he delivered to them a life-like, a singing portrait, of the warbler, painted by a great American animal painter and bird painter--Fuertes. [Illustration: chapter II--end decoration] [Illustration: chapter III--title decoration] III THE FOREST It was the first day of vacation. Schools, if you were not through with them, had now become empty, closed, silent buildings, stripped of authority to imprison and bedevil you and then mark you discreditably because you righteously rebelled against being imprisoned and bedeviled. They could safely be left to dust and cobwebs within and to any weeds that might lodge and sprout outside--the more the better. You stood on the spring edge of the long, free, careless summer and could look unconcernedly across at the distant autumn edge. Then as the woods, now in their first full green, were beginning to turn dry and yellow, the powerless buildings would again become tyrannical schools. But if you had finished high school, on this first day of vacation you were on the Boy's Common: schools behind you, the world of business around you, ahead of you ambitious college or the stately University. Webster had been turned loose on the Boy's Common. * * * * * The family were at breakfast. Every breakfast in the cottage was much the same breakfast: routine is the peace of the roadless. Existence there throughout the year was three hundred and sixty-five times more or less like itself. The earth meantime did change for the signs of the zodiac: the cottage changed also, but had a zodiac of its own. Thus, when the planet was in the sign of _Capricornus_, the cottage on a morning had fried perch for breakfast, as a sign that it was in _Pisces_; when earth was in _Gemini_, the family might have a steak which showed that it was in _Taurus_--or that _Taurus_ was in the family. There was always hot meat of one kind and hot bread of two kinds and hot coffee of any kind. If Webster's father upon entering the breakfast room had not seen a dish before him to carve or apportion, the shock could not have been greater, had he found lying on his folded napkin an enclosure from the bank notifying him that he had been discharged for having made the figure four instead of the figure two.