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CHAPTER IV.

THE PIRATE'S OWN BOOK.

HERE was a wide difference between the Garfield boys. Thomas, the older brother, was quiet, unambitious, and aspired to nothing more than the honest, regular round of a farmer's life. James, the younger, was enterprizing, ambitious and pushing in his temperament. It is more than doubtful if he ever intended to be a farmer, and, probably, from his earliest years his brain was tenanted with visions of greatness. He had now become so expert in the use of tools that he could, while yet a mere boy, make or build almost anything, and his talent as a carpenter was in constant demand. Hardly a building or enterprise of any kind in the section of Ohio where he lived, but bore some marks of his skill. He had a carpenter's bench, and on this he worked early and late, though his labor brought him but small financial return. The land on which the Garfields lived was so poor it yielded them but a scanty living, and James felt the necessity of "working out," as it was called, to increase the limited resources of the family. He was early and late in the village, and among the neighbors, seeking odd jobs for his dexterous hands, and soon came to be

known as the most industrious lad in all Orange. His life was a hard one, but James was patientbeing willing to "labor and wait" for the better times that he knew would come when he deserved them.

His popularity with the citizens of Orange was great, and they often put themselves out to do a favor for the youth who was so firmly resolved to become a fully equipped man, and they gave him employment mornings, evenings and Saturdays. In this way he earned enough to clothe and maintain himself, and also help the family a little. The summer vacation afforded him more time to work, and added largely to his earnings. He was sober and steady, a gaint in labor, and never seemed to even give himself time to rest. The savings of his busy vacations, earned with a jack-plane and hammer, made a full purse to the lad whose previous supplies of money had been more than meagre.

From his earliest appreciable days, young Garfield had been fond of books. Before he could read, he loved to listen to what others would tell him, treasuring every word his unpracticed memory could recall. When he was able to read, his арpetite for it grew with every hour of his life. What he could obtain in the way of literature he devoured, not merely read, but re-read and re-read, until every word was more than a "twice told tale.' Books of adventure, tales of daring, lives

of freebooters, seemed to fascinate his mind the most. The air of wild freedom, the nonchalance and absence of care with which pirates lived, was a great attraction to the boy's spirit, already equal in its boldness to the most daring freebooter the sea ever knew. "The Pirate's Own Book" was a treasure-house of stories in which Garfield took an extreme, ever vivified delight. No matter how many times he pored over the book; no matter how often he absorbed its wild life and seemed to breathe the very atmosphere in which his heroes lived and moved, it was ever a well-spring of pleasure to him. He shared in all the dangers of the pirates, he made the bivouac with them on the lonely beach among the shadows, he drank their coffee, he eat their biscuits and fruit, he stole with them on stealthy foot over the difficult paths to where the gold was buried from the last great prize, a Spanish treasure galleon, he boarded the stranger ship, he carried a torch that set her on fire with the best of them, and he joined with all a boy's ardor in the lusty cheer as the prize went down. He lived their lives over again, he was every brave chief in turn, and he loved the salt waves with the most enthusiastic of them all.

It was perhaps fortunate at this juncture that there were no opportunities to gratify the wild fancies thus born within the boy's heart, fancies the black shadows of which he hardly saw. As it was the Pirate's Own Book only fired his ambition