THE TWO BOYS 29 



the boy cries, " Missed him, did I ? What do you 

 think of that?" What amazement, simulated or 

 real, appears on the older face ! His surprise even 

 surpasses the boy's expectation. " Well ! Well ! 

 If that isn't a big one, and you killed him all by 

 yourself! I'll take his hide off when we get home 

 and you shall have him for supper." 



It is more than probable that some dear people, 

 if they have the patience to read thus far, will lay 

 down the book in disgust, saying, " Cruel ! Cruel ! 

 Boys should be taught never to take life unneces- 

 sarily." The writer accepts their censure with all 

 meekness, and assures them of his hearty sympa- 

 thy. But he is writing of the boy in the open, the 

 out-of-doors boy, the real boy, not of a becurled 

 and anaemic male child, coddled and restrained and 

 tutored until he is no more than a little manikin. 

 And writing of the real boy as he has been, is, and 

 evermore will be, it must be set down in all honesty 

 that he loves the hunt. 



But we have wandered a long way from that 

 lowery day when grandfather said, " Boy, I can't 

 work in the hay-field today; what do you say to 

 going over to the river fishing? " Now the boy had 

 spent innumerable hours on the creek that flowed 

 past the old farm-house, and had sought acquaint- 

 ance with the bull-heads and horndace and eels for 

 a mile in either direction, but the river he had fished 

 only in his dreams. He had seen huge pickerel 

 and giant perch which neighbours had exhibited as 



