There were few men more trusty than Jo, and he always made a round in the plough-field after my father had turned out, as if to convince him that he was mistaken in the opinion that boys were good for nothing. When there was corn to gather, he took the slowest team and the lazy hired man, and brought in more loads than my father and I, and if I found any way to aid him in this I always did it. They seemed to hate each other in secret, for the master disliked a boy who was able to equal him in anything, as if his extra years had availed him nothing; and I confess that my sympathies were always with Jo, for the grown people picked at him because of his ambition to become a man, in all other respects than age, a few years sooner than was usual. While nobody disputed that he was a capable fellow, he was always attempting something he could not carry out, and thus became a subject of ridicule in spite of his worth and ability; if he was sent to the timber for wood, he would volunteer to be back at an impossible time, and although he returned sooner than most men would have done, they laughed at him, and regarded him as a great failure. It was said of him that he exaggerated, but I think that he was only anxious that it be known what he could do if he had an opportunity; and as every one thought less of him than he deserved, he kept on talking of himself to correct a wrong impression, and steadily made matters worse. His activity kept him down, for another thing, for thereby he raised an opposition which would not have existed had he been content to walk leisurely along in the tracks made by his elders. He accepted none of the opinions of the Fairview men, and it was said of him that he was a skeptic for no other reason than that everybody else was religious, and I am not certain but that there was some truth in this. If the truth of a certain principle was asserted, he denied it, not by rude controversy, but by his actions; and by his ingenuity he often made a poorer one seem better, if the one proposed happened to be right, as was sometimes the case--for the Fairview people had but two ways to guess, and occasionally adopted a right method instead of a wrong one, by accident.