Nearly all the children of the town seemed to know him, and regard him as a friend, and used often to run out to meet him when he appeared in the street. Master Lewis, in speaking of Ernest, once quoted Madame de Sévigné's remark, "The true mark of a good heart is its capacity for loving." It was meant to be a picture, and it was a true one. Wyllys Wynn was much like his brother, and a very close friendship existed between them. He was fond of history and poetry; he wrote finely, and usually took the first prize for composition. Tom Toby was quite a different character. He was just a _boy_, in the common sense of the word. In whatever he attempted to do, he was sure to blunder, and was as sure to turn the blunder to some comical account. He had a way of making fun of himself, and of inciting others to laugh at his own expense, which Master Lewis was disposed to censure as wanting in proper self-respect. Tom had no particular friend. He seemed to like all boys alike, except those whom he thought insincere and affected, and such were the butt of his sharp wit and ready ridicule. Tom was famous among the boys for telling stories, and these often related to his own mishaps. A knot of boys was often seen gathered around him to listen to his random talk, his wit, and his day dreams. Though a poor scholar, he was an apt talker, and almost any subject would furnish him a text. His father was a Maine lumber-dealer, and he had spent much time with his father in the logging camps and backwoods towns of the Pine Tree State. His adventures in these regions, told in his droll way, often excited the wonder of his companions. "Did you ever see a bear in the backwoods?" one of the boys asked him one day. "I never saw a live one but once." "What did you do?" "Do? I received a polite bow from him, and then I remembered that I was wanted at home, and went home immediately. "It was this way."--All of the boys of the class now gathered around Tommy, as was the custom when he seemed about to tell one of his odd stories. "I attempted one day to rob a pigeon-woodpecker's nest which I had found in one of the old logging roads that had not been used for several years. The nest was in a big hollow tree. The top of the tree had blown off, leaving a trunk some twelve or fifteen feet high. [Illustration: {TOMMY AND THE BEAR.}] "These woodpeckers make a hole for their nest so large that you can run the whole length of your arm into it. I had long wanted a few eggs from one of these birds' nests. I had heard the lumber-men tell how white and handsome the eggs are.