"Mother!" I whispers, pulling her sleeve.

"Sssh!" says she; "what is it, Will?"

"You never could have done that," I says.

She squeezed my hand and whispered back, "You're right, Will," with an approving smile.

"No," says I, still full of my discovery, "you'd have pounded your thumb."

Her face went ten different ways and then she snorted right out. It was a scandal. It took her so by surprise she couldn't get the best of it, so we two had to leave the church. When we got outside she sat down and laughed for five minutes.

"Whatever does possess you to say such things?" she says. "It was dreadful!"

Next day father patted me on the back with a nice limber sapling, for misbehavior in church. This caused the first show of rebellion I ever saw in mother.

She came out to the woodshed when court was in session.

"I'd like to speak to you a minute," she says to father.

"I have no time now," he answers short.

"I'd like to speak to you a minute," repeats mother: there was a hint of Many-times-great-grandfather De La Tour in her tones. Father considered for a minute; then laid down the club and went out. First they talked quietly. Next, I heard mother—not because she spoke loud, but because there was such a push behind the words:

"I am as much a culprit as he is," she says; "why not use the whip on me?"

Father talked strong about being master in his own house, and like that. It was bluff—boy that I was, I caught the hollow ring of it. Yet mother changed her tone instantly. She turned gently to argument. "You are the master," she says; "but would you make your own son a slave? Why do you treat mistakes as crimes? Why do you expect a man's control in a sixteen-year-old boy? I have never asked for much, but now I ask—"

They walked so far away I couldn't hear what she asked. I didn't care. She was on my side; I'll swear I didn't feel the ridges on my back.

When father returned and said, "Well, you can go 

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