"It's real good," replied Lucina, smiling gratefully.

"Mebbe I'll dig you some more some time," said Jerome, as if the
cedar swamp were a treasure-chest.

"Thank you," said the little girl. Then she timidly extended the
gingerbread again. "I only took three little bites, an' it's real
nice, honest," said she, appealingly.

But she jumped again at the flash in Jerome's black eyes.

"Don't want your old gingerbread!" he cried. "Ain't hungry; have
more'n I want to eat to home. Guess my folks have gingerbread. Like
to know what you're tryin' to give me victuals for! Don't want any of
your old gingerbread!"

"It ain't old, honest," pleaded Lucina, tearfully. "It ain't
old--Hannah, she just baked it this morning." But the boy was gone,
pelting hard across the field, and all there was for the little girl
to do was to go home, with her sassafras in her pocket and her
gingerbread in her hand, with an aromatic savor on her tongue and the
sting of slighted kindness in her heart, with her cosset lamb
trotting at heel, and tell her mother.

Jerome did not return to his nook in the rock. As he neared it he
heard the hollow note of a horn from the northwest.

"S'pose mother wants me," he muttered, and went on past the rock
ledge to the west, and climbed the stone wall into the first of the
three fields which separated him from his home. Across the young