The first great trouble came with the advent of a baby
sister who, some foolish one told him, would steal from him his
mother's heart. Passionately he implored a big cousin to "take
that little baby out and chop its head off."
Later he found it all a mistake, that his mother's heart was still
his own, and so he was reconciled.
From earliest recollection he had listened with wide eyes through
winter evenings, while over a pan of baldwin apples his father
talked with some neighbour who had dropped in, of the early days
when they had hunted deer and wolves and wild turkeys over this
country where were now the thrifty Michigan farms. There were,
too, his father's stories of his own adventures as hunter and miner
in the mountains of the West.
It seemed to him the time would never come when he would be big
enough to hunt and trap and travel through the forests as his
father had done. He grew so slowly; but the years did pass, and at
last one day the boy almost died of gladness when his father told
him he was big enough now to learn to trap, and that he should have
a lesson tomorrow. It was the first great overwhelming joy.
There was also a first great crime.
