What he would say, he was not thinking of, but
the position he would occupy before the audience. There were no
misgivings in any of these dreams of youth.
II
The musings of this dreamer in a tree-top were interrupted by the
peremptory notes of a tin horn from the farmhouse below. The boy
recognized this not only as a signal of declining day and the withdrawal
of the sun behind the mountains, but as a personal and urgent
notification to him that a certain amount of disenchanting drudgery
called chores lay between him and supper and the lamp-illumined pages of
The Last of the Mohicans. It was difficult, even in his own estimation,
to continue to be a hero at the summons of a tin horn--a silver clarion
and castle walls would have been so different--and Phil slid swiftly down
from his perch, envying the squirrels who were under no such bondage of
duty.
Recalled to the world that now is, the lad hastily gathered a bouquet of
columbine and a bunch of the tender leaves and the red berries of the
wintergreen, called to "Turk," who had been all these hours watching a
woodchuck hole, and ran down the hill by leaps and circuits as fast as
his little legs could carry him, and, with every appearance of a lad who
puts duty before pleasure, arrived breathless at the kitchen door, where
Alice stood waiting for him.
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