His mother was there,
and she started in fear at his face.
"It is true, mother," he said, "I am not going to deceive you, I am
going into the forest, but I will come again and often. It is the only
life that I can lead, I was made for it I suppose; I have tried the
other out there in the fields, and I have tried hard, but I cannot stand
it."
She knew too well to seek to stop him. He took his rifle from its
secluded corner, and the feeling of it, stock and barrel, was good to
his hands. He put on the buckskin hunting shirt, leggings and moccasins,
fringed and beaded, and with them he felt all his old zest and pride
returning. He kissed his mother and sister good-by, shook hands with his
younger brother, did the same with his astonished father at the door,
and then, rifle on shoulder, disappeared in the circling forest.
That night Braxton Wyatt sneered and said that a savage could not keep
from being a savage, but Paul Cotter turned upon him so fiercely that he
took it back. The schoolmaster made no comment aloud, but to himself he
said, "It was bound to come and perhaps it is no loss that it has come.
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