orphan brood of mountain quail which he had taken under his protection.
For, while he nourished a keen love of sport, it was controlled by a
boy's larger understanding of nature: a pantheistic sympathy with
man and beast and plant, which made him keenly alive to the strange
cruelties of creation, revealed to him some queer animal feuds, and made
him a chivalrous partisan of the weaker. He had even gone out of his way
to defend, by ingenious contrivances of his own, the hoard of a golden
squirrel and the treasures of some wild bees from a predatory bear,
although it did not prevent him later from capturing the squirrel by an
equally ingenious contrivance, and from eventually eating some of the
honey.
He was late home that evening. But this was "vacation,"--the district
school was closed, and but for the household "chores," which occupied
his early mornings, each long summer day was a holiday. So two or three
passed; and then one morning, on his going to the post-office, the
postmaster threw down upon the counter a real and rather bulky letter,
duly stamped, and addressed to Mr. Leonidas Boone! Leonidas was too
discreet to open it before witnesses, but in the solitude of the
trail home broke the seal. It contained another letter with no
address--clearly the one SHE expected--and, more marvelous still, a
sheaf of trout-hooks, with delicate gut-snells such as Leonidas had
only dared to dream of. The letter to himself was written in a clear,
distinct hand, and ran as follows:--
DEAR LEE,--How are you getting on on old Casket Ridge? It seems a coon's
age since you and me was together, and times I get to think I must just
run up and see you! We're having bully times in 'Frisco, you bet! though
there ain't anything wild worth shucks to go to see--'cept the sea
lions at the Cliff House. They're just stunning--big as a grizzly, and
bigger--climbing over a big rock or swimming in the sea like an otter or
muskrat. I'm sending you some snells and hooks, such as you can't get at
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