I put it away in the pine box with leather hinges on its cover which Uncle Peabody had made for me and wondered again what it was all about, and again that night I broke camp and moved further into the world over the silent trails of knowledge.
Uncle Peabody went away for a few days after the harvesting. He had gone afoot, I knew not where. He returned one afternoon in a buggy with the great Michael Hacket of the Canton Academy. Hacket was a big, brawny, red-haired, kindly Irishman with a merry heart and tongue, the latter having a touch of the brogue of the green isle which he had never seen, for he had been born in Massachusetts and had got his education in Harvard. He was then a man of forty.
"You're coming to me this fall," he said as he put his hand on my arm and gave me a little shake. "Lad! you've got a big pair of shoulders! Ye shall live in my house an' help with the chores if ye wish to."
"That'll be grand," said Uncle Peabody, but, as to myself, just then, I knew not what to think of it.
We were picking up potatoes in the field.
"Without 'taters an' imitators this world would be a poor place to live in," said Mr. Hacket. "Some imitate the wise—thank God!—some the foolish—bad 'cess to the devil!"
As he spoke we heard a wonderful bird song in a tall spruce down by the brook.
"Do ye hear the little silver bells in yon tower?" he asked.
As we listened a moment he whispered: "It's the song o' the Hermit Thrush. I wonder, now, whom he imitates. I think the first one o' them must 'a' come on Christmas night an' heard the angels sing an' remembered a little o' it so he could give it to his children an' keep it in the world."
I looked up into the man's face and liked him, and after that I looked forward to the time when I should know him and his home.