"Well, partly."
"Do you think that hunting is more important than your academic career?"
"No, sir."
"Then what is it?"
"There's a big buck in Bennett's Woods," Bud blurted out. "Gramps—Mr. Bennett, that is—has always dreamed of killing just such a deer. It's sort of like a dream he's always had. Gramps had been sick and he isn't exactly young. No one can be sure he'll be able to hunt next deer season. He has to get the black buck this year. He thinks I can help him."
"In other words you want to stay out of school for an indefinite period to help Delbert Bennett get this buck. Well, I think it can be arranged." Then, before Bud could thank him, Mr. Thorne went on. "In fact, I think it will be a very important part of your education. You may not see what I mean now, but maybe you will later."
Gramps, who was splitting wood when Bud got home that afternoon, yelled "Hallelujah!" when he heard the good news and threw a stick of firewood in the air. "The black buck's as good as ours," he said.
Not long afterward the school bus was crawling up the highway behind the snowplow that was clearing four inches of new snow that had added itself to the four inches that had fallen yesterday. Bud was staring out the window, almost oblivious to Goethe Shakespeare Umberdehoven who sat beside him as usual. He saw little since wind-blown sheets of snow obscured everything more than twenty yards from the highway, but he was thinking of the caterpillar that had crawled up the log when Gramps scored his double on grouse. Bud had been a little skeptical when Gramps had predicted a harsh, early winter from the caterpillar's markings, but now it looked as if they were in for the earliest and harshest winter in ten years.
When Get Umberdehoven asked if he was going deer hunting, Bud said "Yeah" without turning away from the window.