CHAPTER XIV
In which, at last, we find a Hero
ILL-ADVISED, for many a week to come, was the man who mentioned piracy within the four gates of Chamboro.
Not that Lonely and his followers lost all that ancient and timeless exuberance of animal spirits which clings eternally to youth,—as the fire in the Barrisons' stable-loft, and the blowing up of old Witherspoon's garden wheel-barrow, with gunpowder, eloquently enough testified.
But in Chamboro, just between early harvest apple-time and the muskmelon season, there was one particular spot round which the thoughts and fancies of the boy-mind invariably and ever wistfully centred.
This spot was Cap'n Steiner's orchard. For in that well-guarded little riverside domain bloomed the one tree of Chamboro's forbidden fruit, a strange and legendary thing, of more than earthly trunk and leaves, which made the old Captain's high board fence, mili-
