"Give it to me," I said, "so that I may send it off at once to be enlarged for his Christmas present."
Friday.
Very heavy rains for three days, and another big "tide," with seven panels of the back fence washed away, and Perilous a boiling yellow flood down which logs and whole trees are rushing. What was my horror, on hearing loud cheers from the stable-lot this morning, to see Nucky out in the middle of the torrent, standing calmly on a swift log, which even as I glanced, shot around a curve and out of sight. Ten minutes of agony for me followed; then Nucky reappeared, wet only to the waist, and followed by every boy on the place.
"Gee, that wasn't nothing," he deprecated, in answer to my reproaches, "I've rid logs ever sence I was born. I just jumped on her when she come a-nigh shore, and off again down Perilous a piece. I haint afeared!"
"Haint afeared got his neck broke yesterday," remarked Joab, drily.
These desperate and daring moods of Nucky's are source of untold suffering to me. I know they are caused largely by his worry over Blant, and his baffled desire to be at his post on Trigger. Sometimes I think it would be best to let him go,—there can be no doubt that Blant does need him, and he is doing little in his studies, and is so bitter and gloomy that I scarcely know my once delightful boy.
XVI
FILIAL PIETY AND CROUP
Saturday Bed-time.
This evening, while we were popping corn in the "fotch-on" poppers, Killis said he could recollect "capping" corn in a skillet under the still while he and his father made liquor.