There was Percy Pound, a fat, freckled boy with chubby cheeks,
who took half a dozen boys' story-papers and was always being kept
in for reading detective stories behind his desk. There was Tip
Smith, destined by his freckles and red hair to be the buffoon in
all our games, though he walked like a timid little old man and had
a funny, cracked laugh. Tip worked hard in his father's grocery
store every afternoon, and swept it out before school in the
morning. Even his recreations were laborious. He collected
cigarette cards and tin tobacco-tags indefatigably, and would sit
for hours humped up over a snarling little scroll-saw which he kept
in his attic. His dearest possessions were some little pill
bottles that purported to contain grains of wheat from the Holy
Land, water from the Jordan and the Dead Sea, and earth from the
Mount of Olives. His father had bought these dull things from a
Baptist missionary who peddled them, and Tip seemed to derive great
satisfaction from their remote origin.

The tall boy was Arthur Adams. He had fine hazel eves that
were almost too reflective and sympathetic for a boy, and such a
pleasant voice that we all loved to hear him read aloud. Even when
he had to read poetry aloud at school, no one ever thought of
laughing. To be sure, he was not at school very much of the time.
He was seventeen and should have finished the High School the year
before, but he was always off somewhere with his gun. Arthur's
mother was dead, and his father, who was feverishly absorbed in
promoting schemes, wanted to send the boy away to school and get
him off his hands; but Arthur always begged off for another year
and promised to study. I remember him as a tall, brown boy with an
intelligent face, always lounging among a lot of us little fellows,
laughing at us oftener than with us, but such a soft, satisfied