When his father had gone for a trip on a lumber raft or to work for a few
days on some farm in the country back from the river, the boy, left often
without money and with but a few loaves of bread, went fishing when he was
hungry and when he was not did nothing but idle the days away in the grass
on the river bank. Boys from the town came sometimes to spend an hour with
him, but in their presence he was embarrassed and a little annoyed. He
wanted to be left alone with his dreams. One of the boys, a sickly, pale,
undeveloped lad of ten, often stayed with him through an entire summer
afternoon. He was the son of a merchant in the town and grew quickly tired
when he tried to follow other boys about. On the river bank he lay beside
Hugh in silence. The two got into Hugh's boat and went fishing and the
merchant's son grew animated and talked. He taught Hugh to write his own
name and to read a few words. The shyness that kept them apart had begun to
break down, when the merchant's son caught some childhood disease and died.

In the darkness above the cliff that night in Burlington Hugh remembered
things concerning his boyhood that had not come back to his mind in years.
The very thoughts that had passed through his mind during those long days
of idling on the river bank came streaming back.

After his fourteenth year when he went to work at the railroad station Hugh
had stayed away from the river. With his work at the station, and in the
garden back of Sarah Shepard's house, and the lessons in the afternoons,
he had little idle time. On Sundays however things were different. Sarah
Shepard did not go to church after she came to Mudcat Landing, but she
would have no work done on Sundays. On Sunday afternoons in the summer she
and her husband sat in chairs beneath a tree beside the house and went to
sleep. Hugh got into the habit of going off by himself. He wanted to sleep
also, but did not dare. He went along the river bank by the road that ran
south from the town, and when he had followed it two or three miles, turned