I felt thoroughly ashamed of the place and sat near him and, for a time,
said nothing as he read.

"What's that?" I ventured to ask by and by.

"A story," he answered. "I met that ragged ol' woman in the road t'other
day an' she give me a lot of 'em an' showed me the pictures an' I got to
readin' 'em. Don't you tell anybody 'cause my ol' dad hates stories an'
he'd lick me 'til I couldn't stan' if he knew I was readin' 'em."

I begged him to read out loud and he read from a tale of two robbers
named Thunderbolt and Lightfoot who lived in a cave in the mountains.
They were bold, free, swearing men who rode beautiful horses at a wild
gallop and carried guns and used them freely and with unerring skill,
and helped themselves to what they wanted.

He stopped, by and by, and confided to me the fact that he thought he
would run away and join a band of robbers.

"How do you run away?" I asked.

"Just take the turnpike and keep goin' toward the mountains. When ye
meet a band o' robbers give 'em the sign an' tell 'em you want to join."

He went on with the book and read how the robbers had hung a captive who
had persecuted them and interfered with their sport. The story explained
how they put the rope around the neck of the captive and threw the
other end of it over the limb of a tree and pulled the man into the air.