Next morning the pen was down and the captive gone. The Boy didn't seem much surprised or appear to care. When he was alone with his mother she whispered:
"Didn't you go out there last night and let it loose when the dogs were asleep?"
He was still a moment and then nodded his head.
His mother clasped him to her heart.
"O my Boy! My own—I love you!"
XII
The second winter in the wilderness was not so hard. The heavy work of clearing the timber for the corn fields was done and the new cabin and its furniture had been finished except the door, for which there was little use.
The new neighbors had brought cheer to the mother's heart.
An early spring broke the winter of 1818 and clothed the wilderness world in robes of matchless beauty.
The Boy's gourds were placed beside the new garden and the noise of chattering martins echoed over the cabin. The toughened muscles of his strong, slim body no longer ached in rebellion at his tasks. Work had become a part of the rhythm of life. He could sing at his hardest task. The freedom and strength of the woods had gotten into his blood. In this world of waving trees, of birds and beasts, of laughing sky and rippling waters, there were no masters, no slaves. Millions in gold were of no value in its elemental struggle. Character, skill, strength and manhood only counted. Poverty was teaching him the first great lesson of human life, that man shall eat his bread in the sweat of his brow and that industry is the only foundation on which the moral and material universe has ever rested or can rest.