driving their bands of hogs, some of them brought from farms a hundred
miles distant, to fatten on the dead and wounded covering the ground.

In another of our reading-lessons some of the American forests were
described. The most interesting of the trees to us boys was the sugar
maple, and soon after we had learned this sweet story we heard
everybody talking about the discovery of gold in the same
wonder-filled country.

One night, when David and I were at grandfather's fireside solemnly
learning our lessons as usual, my father came in with news, the most
wonderful, most glorious, that wild boys ever heard. "Bairns," he
said, "you needna learn your lessons the nicht, for we're gan to
America the morn!" No more grammar, but boundless woods full of
mysterious good things; trees full of sugar, growing in ground full
of gold; hawks, eagles, pigeons, filling the sky; millions of birds'
nests, and no gamekeepers to stop us in all the wild, happy land. We
were utterly, blindly glorious. After father left the room,
grandfather gave David and me a gold coin apiece for a keepsake, and
looked very serious, for he was about to be deserted in his lonely old
age. And when we in fullness of young joy spoke of what we were going
to do, of the wonderful birds and their nests that we should find, the
sugar and gold, etc., and promised to send him a big box full of that
tree sugar packed in gold from the glorious paradise over the sea,
poor lonely grandfather, about to be forsaken, looked with downcast
eyes on the floor and said in a low, trembling, troubled voice, "Ah,
poor laddies, poor laddies, you'll find something else ower the sea
forbye gold and sugar, birds' nests and freedom fra lessons and
schools. You'll find plenty hard, hard work." And so we did. But
nothing he could say could cloud our joy or abate the fire of