CHAPTER VI.
The Log Canoe.
Every thing went on very prosperously, for a week or two, in the little study.

Marco became more and more attentive to his studies, and more and more interested in them.

He was often getting into little difficulties, it is true, and giving trouble to his uncle and aunt; but then he generally seemed sorry afterward for the trouble which he had thus occasioned, and he bore reproof, and such punishments as his cousin thought it necessary to inflict, with so much good-humor, that they all readily forgave him for his faults and misdemeanors.
One day, however, about a fortnight after he had commenced his studies, he got led away, through the influence of a peculiar temptation, into a rather serious act of transgression, which might have been followed by very grave consequences.

The circumstances were these.

He had commenced his studies as usual, after having received his half-hour's instruction from Forester, and was in the midst of the process of reducing the fraction 504/756 to its lowest terms, when he happened to look out of the window and to see two boys climbing over a garden fence belonging to one of the neighbor's houses, at a little distance in the rear of his uncle's house.