Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 04

It was not built with the idea of ever becoming a place in history: simply a boys' cabin in the woods. Fibe, Rich, Pie and Butch were the bunch that built it. Fibe was short for Fiber, and we gave him that name because his real name was Wood. Rich got his name from being a mudsock. Pie got his because he was a regular pieface. And they called me Butch for no reason at all except that perhaps my great-great-grandfather was a butcher. We were a fine gang of youngsters, all about thirteen years, wise in boys' deviltry. What we didn't know about killing cats, breaking window-panes in barns, stealing coal from freight-cars, and borrowing eggs from neighboring hencoops without consent of the hens, wasn't worth the knowing. There used to be another boy in the gang, Skinny. One day when we ran away to the swimming-hole after school, this other little fellow didn't come back with us.