CHAPTER 18A JACKRABBIT
Jimmy Raeburn knew every step of the way, for he was following the path to the swimming hole. It was not really a creek that flowed here, a mile out of town, but a mere trickle of water that gathered, in places, into shallow ponds. The boys of the village went racing there after school. Those races and most of all the slower homeward journey after the swim, when with loitering steps all the boys went sadly toward the close of day—when there were cows to be milked, wood to be chopped, scolding voices to be listened to—those races and the slow returns had fixed in the mind of Jimmy Raeburn every inch of the way. Now it seemed to him that the pale, distorted trunk of the old tree which had been struck by lightning spoke to him with a ghostly voice as he went by. “This
