He learned only a poor lesson the
first day, for, on coming in sight of the schoolhouse, he heard a
rush of feet behind him and saw his filly charging down the trail.
He had to go back with her and lose the day, a thought dreadful to
him, for now hope was high, and school days few and precious. At
first he was angry. Then he sat among the ferns, covering his face
and sobbing with sore resentment. The little filly stood over him
and rubbed her silky muzzle on his neck, and kicked up her heels in
play as he pushed her back. Next morning he put her behind a
fence, but she went over it with the ease of a wild deer and came
bounding after him. When, at last, she was shut in the box-stall
he could hear her calling, half a mile away, and it made his heart
sore. Soon after, a moose treed him on the trail and held him
there for quite half a day. Later he had to help thrash and was
laid up with the measles. Then came rain and flooded flats that
turned him off the trail. Years after he used to say that work and
weather, and sickness and distance, and even the beasts of the
field and wood, resisted him in the way of learning.
He went to school at Hillsborough that winter.
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