He was the son of a tobacco-roller, untaught and unfriended, but he
dreamed like a king. His imagination began to paint without hands images
of power upon a blank and mighty wall, and it painted like a young
Michael Angelo. It used the colours of immaturity, but it conceived with
strength. "When I am a man--" he said aloud; and again, "When I am a
man--" The eyes in the pool looked at him yearningly; the leaves from
the golden hickories fell upon the water and hid him from himself. In
the distance a fox barked, and Gideon Rand's deep voice came rolling
through the wood: "Lewis! Lewis!"

The boy dipped the pail, lifted it brimming, and rose from his knees. As
he did so, a man parted the bushes on the far side of the stream,
glanced at the mossed and slippery stones rising from its bed, then with
a light and steady foot crossed to the boy's side. He was a young man,
wearing a fringed hunting-shirt and leggins and a coonskin cap, and
carrying a long musket. Over his shoulder was slung a wild turkey, and
at his heels came a hound. He smiled, showing very white teeth, and drew
forward his bronze trophy.

"Supper," he said briefly.

The boy nodded. "I heard your gun. I've made a fire yonder beneath a
black gum. Adam Gaudylock, I am well-nigh a man!"

"So you be, so you be," answered the other; "well-nigh a man."

The boy beat the air with a branch of sumach. "I want to be a man! But I
don't want to be a tobacco-roller like my father, nor--"

"Nor a hunter like me," the other finished placidly. "Be the Governor of