“You mean, sir, that you have killed only a cow. You have killed one cow, but I have killed forty boys. The first one I killed was up in a tree. He fell exactly as a squirrel falls, hanging on to the last, and I laughed. Then I got to thinking about it, and laughed no more. I lay on the ground, sick as a dog, and made up my mind I would never have a son.”
The boy laid a hand of sympathy on the old man’s arm.
“Little Pine, do you remember that your grandmother always called Horatio the Gray Squirrel? And do you remember how he held you by the hands and let you walk up him? And do you remember how your Noko laughed and said that the pine was climbing the squirrel, whereas the squirrel should be climbing the pine?”
The boy smiled sadly.
“Well, I want you to do something in memory of Horatio.”
“Yes, my father.”
“Then we will carry Sempronia down to your canoe, and you shall paddle round and meet the Aspen, which is just now coming down to fill the black buoy. I will give you a note to the captain, and he will sell the carcass, and you shall save the money to go to school with.”
Tears at last burst from the stoical young eyes. This was his punishment, this gift from the man he had ruined.
“I take her to Sault myself,” he sobbed.
“There, there, Horatio, stop crying. You seem to have forgotten all your Greek. When Plato said that a boy is the most unmanageable of animals, his best pupil retorted that a boy is more likely to do what is right than what is politic.”