The teamster's cry of horror brought everybody to the scene. Cleena was the first to reach it and to find John standing by the mouth of the well, whitefaced and trembling.

"What's it? What's down there? What mean ye yellin' that gait? Speak, man, if ye can."

He could only point downward, while he strained his ears to catch any sound that might come from below.

Then Cleena shook him fiercely. "Speak, I tell ye! Where's the boy?"

The other still pointed down into the shaft, but he made out to say: —

"I heard him laugh, then shout, and he must have gone stark crazy."

"He down there? That poor, senseless gossoon? Where was you that you'd leave him do it?"

"I was walking – wait! I hear something."

Four white, terror-stricken faces now bent above the old well, while Cleena's arms clasped her "childer" tightly, fearing they, too, might be snatched away from her.

"Saints save us, it's bewitched! Oh, the day, the day!"

"Shut up, woman! Keep still. I hear something."

Again they stooped and listened, and Amy's keen ears reported, joyfully: —

"It's Fayette! It is, it is! It sounds as if he were speaking from the far end of a long, long tube. But he's alive, he's alive!"

"He might as well be dead. His bones must be broken, and he can't live long in such an air as that," said Hallam.

"I don't know. That he's alive at all proves that the air isn't as bad as I thought. Besides, he may not have broken any bones. He's had fearful falls, before this, and he always came out about sound. But the rope doesn't reach much more than two-thirds down. I've heard they dug this well a hundred and fifty feet deep. They had to, to reach water from top this rock."

"A hundred and fifty feet! How can we possibly reach him?"

"Not by standin' talkin'. Whisk to the cottage, Amy, an' beg the length of all the rope they have. To save a lad's life – be nimble!"

The girl was away long before Cleena finished speaking, while the latter herself darted into the house, caught off the sheets and blankets from the beds, and tore them into strips. Never wasting one motion of her strong hands, and praying ceaselessly, she tied each fresh length and tested it with all her force.

Meanwhile Amy almost flew over the space between "Spite House" and the cottage, arriving there nigh breathless; but gasping out her errand, she rushed straight to the line in the drying yard and began to tear it from its fastenings on the poles.

"You're wanting my rope, miss? Somebody in the well? Heaven help him! But wait! If it's cleaning the well he is, why of course he'd be down there. Who is it?"

"Fayette. Maybe you know him as 'Bony.'"

"The half-wit? Pshaw, Miss. Don't look that frightened. He's all safe, never fear. Nothing hurts him. The Lord looks after him. I'm afraid this rope won't hold, it's so old. Wait, I'll go, too. Never mind the children, they'll have to take care of themselves."

All the while she was talking the kindly woman had been rolling the line, retying it where their haste broke its worn strands, and following Amy up over the slope. Now she paused for one second to remonstrate: —

"You, Victoria, go back! There's William Gladstone trying to creep after us. Beatrice, Belinda, go home. You mustn't follow mother every time she turns her back! Go home, I tell you. Go – right – straight – back – home. My! but this is steep!"

A shriek, shrill and piercing as only infant lungs could utter, made even Amy stop, eager though she was to reach the well where poor "Bony" might already have breathed his last. The one backward glance she cast showed the numerous children of the house of Jones toiling industriously skyward, in their mother's footsteps. Victoria, who was "eight and should have known better," had left William Gladstone to take care of himself, with the result that, being less than two years old and rather unsteady on his legs, he had toddled up to the biggest stone in the path, tried to step over it, lost his balance, and fallen. The hill was so steep that once the fat little fellow began to roll downwards he could not stop, and the terrified outcry first showed the mother his danger.

"He'll bump his head against a rock and – "

Mrs. Jones did not finish her sentence, but faced about and ran frantically down the slope, catching up her baby and smothering it with kisses, although she had assured the little fellow, at least a dozen times that day, that "he was the very plague of her life." She had dropped the rope, and Amy caught it, then turned and ran as fast upward as her neighbor was going in the other direction. Behind Amy still followed Victoria, Beatrice, and Belinda.

"You should go back. Your little brother's hurt," shouted she.

"Yes'm. He is often," coolly replied Victoria, who could have the minor excitement of examining the baby's bruises any day, but who did not intend to lose the greater one of "a man down the well" for any commonplace home matter.

Just before she came to the crest of the knoll Amy hesitated, and stood still. It seemed to her she could not go on and face the possible, even probable, tragedy at the top, and into the midst of her awestruck waiting there was hurled this startling question: —

"Say, miss, where do you s'pose you'll have the funeral? May I come?"

"Ugh! Oh, you horrid little thing!"

Victoria appeared so amazed at the effect of her inquiry that she stared back into Amy's face, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

"Wh-h – why!"

"I shouldn't have said that. But you go right straight back home. Your mother wants you. I don't. Oh, dear! How could you say it?"

"Why, 'cause I like to go to funerals. I go to every one Ma does. She's got a real nice 'funeral dress,' an' so have I."

Amy fled. She had never seen anything like little Victoria, and she was so indignant that she almost forgot her dread of what might lie before her. She reached the group about the well, who were now utterly silent, and seemed to be watching with more astonishment than terror something happening within it.

Amy, also, stretched her neck to see, though she shut her eyes, and this naturally prevented; nor did she open them till she felt Cleena clutch the skirt of her frock and heard her exclaim: —

"Faith, but he's the biggest monkey out o' the Zoo! Arrah musha! I'll teach him scaring folks out o' their wits, an' wastin' good bedclothes on such havers! Huh!"

For this was the marvel that now presented. Poor, silly Fayette, looking more foolish and grotesque than ever, climbing upwards into the daylight, blinking and sputtering, his back against the stones of one side the shaft, his feet against the other, his hands clutching, pulling; both feet and hands almost prehensile, like the creature's to which Cleena had likened him, yet safe, unbruised, and only mud-splashed and laughing.

With a final, agile movement he reached the top, threw his arms about the beam, and leaped to the ground beside them. Then he laughed again, hilariously, uproariously, and not for long.

In Cleena Keegan's indignant soul a plan had been rapidly forming.

"So you'd be givin' us all the terrors, would ye, avick? Sure, a taste o' the same medicine's good for the doctor as his patient. I'll just give ye a try of it, an' see what ye say. Hmm, them sheets might ha' lasted for years, so they might; an' them blankets, my heart!"

Before anybody, least of all the astonished "Bony," could comprehend what she would be about, Cleena had tripped and thrown the lad to the ground. She was more powerful than even his boasted muscle, and he quite unprepared for what she meant to do. The life-line made from her cherished bedclothing was twisted about his wet shoulders like a flash. Yet there seemed nothing violent nor vindictive as she rolled him over and over, wisely winding and binding first his hands and feet. After that the punishment she administered was but a question of endurance on her part, and the length of the line.

"There, you blatherskite! What's your guardian angel thinkin' of ye the now, you poor, ignorant, heathen gossoon? Well for ye that old Cleena has met up with ye to beat some bits o' sense into your idle pate. Tight, is it? Well, not so tight as the bands o' me heart when I looked to see ye brought up to me dead. 'Twon't hurt. Lie there an' rest."

Cleena finished her harangue and her task together. After that she stood up straight and strong, and regarded the teamster with a questioning eye.

"Is it true, what he says, that he's nor kith nor kin, hereabouts?"

"I guess it's true," answered John, laughing at the ludicrous appearance of Fayette upon the ground. "He was born in the poorhouse, an' I've heard his mother died. His father had before then, I know. I used – "

Cleena was in no mood for long stories, and she foresaw that one was imminent. She interrupted without ceremony —

"So, if I take him in hand to train him a bit, what for no? There'll be no one botherin' an' interferin', is it?"

"I guess there won't anybody worry about 'Bony.' He's right handy around the mill, an' he does odd jobs for a many people; but if you want him, I 'low you can have him 'for a song.'"

"I'll have no song singin', not I, nor from him. But if I don't make a smart, decent lad where there lies a fool, my name isn't Cleena Keegan, the day. Now what's about the well?"

"That's what I want to know, Cleena," cried Amy. "How did he, could he, fall into it and climb out of it alive?"

"Easier than you think, miss. He slid down the rope as far as it went, I suppose, then caught his feet in the stones of the sides, then his hands, and went down just as he came up. He didn't go into the water in the bottom, of course; but he's proved that the well is safe enough, and to-morrow morning he ought to be made to go down, properly fixed, with a rope around his waist and the tackle for bailing it out. It'll be a job, then, even after to-day's beginning. But I'll tell the boss about it, and I don't doubt he'll send the other man that helps 'Bony' in the mill village, and get things right this time. What say, boy? Think you'll take matters a little soberer to-morrow, if I come back to help?"

Fayette lay with closed eyes and made no answer, but Cleena spoke for him, and as one in authority: —

"Faith an' he will. An' I'm thankin' ye, sir, for all ye've done the day. Sure, by this hour to-morrow, we should begin to see daylight 'twixt the dirt."

"I 'low you will. You're a master scrubber, and no mistake. Well, good-by. Anything I can do for you village way?"

"I'm beholden to you, sir, an' so are my folks, but there's not. I'm for sending the childer down on their donkeys to see how fares the mistress an' master; an' they'll fetch back what's lackin' o' food an' so on, when they come. It's hungerin' sore will the sweet lady be for a sight of her own."

"Oh, Cleena, is that so? May we go? But – that will leave you quite alone," said Amy.

Hallam smiled. "She'll not be so very much alone, after all, dear," and he nodded significantly toward the still apparently sleeping Fayette.

Then they went away to saddle the burros, and after having received a mysterious message which they were to deliver to Adam Burn, to the effect that "he'll know what to send o' them things in his box."

"And it's as clear as the sunshine just what you are asking, dear old Goodsoul. That Friend Adam shall give us your dollars out of his box. You transparent old pretender! Well, never mind, Scrubbub. Some day our ships will come home, and then – you shall live in lavender," said Amy, hugging the faithful woman, and smiling, though tears of gratitude were in her dark eyes.

Which eyes, happening to look downward, saw Fayette's own half open, and watching this little affectionate by-play with deep interest. No sooner, however, did he perceive that Amy had discovered this fact than his lids went down with a snap.

"Ah, ha, Fayette! I saw you. I'm sorry for you, but just you tell Goodsoul, here, that you'll remember not to shame your 'guardian angel' any more, and she'll let you up. I know her. Her heart's made of honey and sugar, and everything soft and sticky. I believe she's caught you in it, now, bad as you are, and if she has, you'll never get quite clear of her love and too demonstrative kindness."

Then she cried to Hallam, who was limping toward the tethered burros: "Now for a race. These dear little beasties would trot a good pace if they realized they were on the road to mother and father and Friend Adam Burn's big oat-bin!"

As they passed through the gateless entrance to "Bareacre," Hallam turned, and with something of Amy's cheerfulness waved his hand to Cleena.

"We'll be back before dark, Goodsoul. Don't keep that lad tied any longer. Don't."

"Arrah musha! Can't I do what I will with me own? There's somewhat to pass 'twixt him an' me afore he gets free o' them bonds."

Evidently, there was; nor was she sorry to see all go and leave her alone with Fayette. Of what occurred during their brief absence at the Clove, nobody ever heard; but when the brother and sister rode up the slope, just as the evening fell, Fayette appeared to meet them and take their burros for them. His manner was subdued and gentle, and on his homely face was a look of exceeding peace.

Amy nudged Hallam mischievously. "Another lull before another storm, isn't it?"

Hallam regarded the half-wit critically. "No. But I think he's 'met his Waterloo.'"

"Oh, is that what we are to call her in future? She's already as many names as a Spanish princess." Then she lifted her voice to summon Cleena.

"Heigho, 'Waterloo'! Father and mother are doing finely, and send love, and dear old Adam sent something much more substantial, but not what you asked for. Just plain beefsteak and potatoes, and a jolly chicken pie that's in a basket on Hallam's crutch. Those crutches are the handiest things!"

"Faith, so they be. An' there's a fire out of some wood the cottage woman sent, an' the steak'll broil while the taties roast, like the whisk of a squirrel in the tree."

So "Waterloo" became another of good Cleena's "love names." For it's ever the tone and not the words that makes a sweet sound in one's ears, and the woman's heart thrilled, and her weary shoulders lifted because of the love which sang through Amy's innocent jest.

CHAPTER X.
HOME-MAKING

For one whole week the artist and his wife remained at the Clove. During that time "Spite House" had undergone the most thorough cleaning and overhauling of its existence. The walls had been scraped of the ancient and discolored whitewash that covered them, and a fresh coat of sweet-smelling lime applied.

"It's like a new-mown field, I think," said Amy, on the day that this whitewashing had taken place, to Fayette who was artisan in chief – always under Cleena's orders.

"An' I must be the daisy that grows in it," he returned, catching a glimpse of his lime-splashed face in the tiny pocket mirror he always carried.

"A whole bunch of daisies, indeed. But isn't it jolly? I never did so much hard work in my life; my hands are all blistered and sore, my feet ache – whew! And I never, never was so happy."

Fayette paused midway to the shed, which he had repaired with bits of boards, begged or offered in various sources. The whitewash brush over his shoulder dripped a milky fluid upon his bared head, and occasionally a drop trickled as far as the corner of his capacious mouth.

But he minded nothing so trivial as this, and he stared at Amy in the same wonderment with which he had regarded her from the beginning of their acquaintance. She also paused and returned his gaze with an amused scrutiny.

"Fayette, that stare of yours is getting chronic. I wish you'd give it up. Everything I do or say seems to astonish you. What's the matter with me? Am I not like other girls? You must know many down at the mill."

"No, you ain't."

"How different? I'd really like to know."

"Ain't seen you cry once, – or not more 'n once," he corrected truthfully. "An' you left all them things up there, an' the trees, an' the posies, an' everything like that way."

For one moment Amy's breast heaved and her voice choked. Then she jerked her head in a fashion she had when she wished to throw aside unpleasant things and replied: —

"What would be the use of crying? If it would bring them all back, I'd cry a bath-tub full. But it won't. Thinking about it only makes it worse. It had to be, and in some ways I'm thankful it did. It was all unreal and dreamlike up there. I knew nothing about the sorrows and hardships in the real world. But how I am talking! I wonder, do you understand at all what I have said?"

"I couldn't help cryin' when the bluebird's nest fell an' smashed all the eggs," remarked Fayette, whimpering at the recollection. His words were "like a bit of blue sky, showing through a cloud," as the girl often expressed it, when the untaught lad revealed something of his intense love of nature, so strongly in contrast to his otherwise limited intelligence.

"Well, we must forget what's past and go to work. I'll tether the burros out of the roadside while you clean up their shed; and when they come back to find it all sweet and white, like Pepita herself, they'll be as pleased as Punch. Wonder we never thought of having the old stable at Fairacres whitewashed."

"Didn't have me, then," answered the lad.

"Fayette, you're as vain as a peacock. You always say 'ME' as if it were spelled with the biggest kind of capital letters."

"Do I? Hmm," responded Fayette, with a vacant smile.

Then Amy went into the house where Hallam and Cleena were arguing about what rooms should be arranged for the personal use of master and mistress, because Hallam thought his father's likes and habits should take precedence of all others.

During this time of separation from him, the son had grown to think of his parent as a whimsical invalid, only. Oddly enough, with his own physical infirmity, he had come to look upon any bodily weakness of other lads or men as something almost degrading. He had always felt himself disgraced by his own lameness. It was this which had given him so bitter and distorted an outlook upon life, and involuntarily there had crept into his love for his father a feeling of contempt as well.

Something of this showed in his talk with his sister, over this selection of rooms, and shocked her. Then, with loyal indignation she proceeded to enlighten him as to her own view of the subject.

"Now, see here, Hallam Kaye. I don't believe, I can't believe, and I never will believe that from being a brilliant scholar and a wonderfully talented artist my darling father has suddenly become a – a – the sickly, selfish man you seem to imagine."

"Amy! I never said that. I never thought it. I only remember that he has always had the best of everything, and I supposed he always should."

The tears of excited protest rushed into her eyes, but she dashed them away. "Queer, I never cry, hardly ever, unless I'm mad. I am mad at you, Hal Kaye, right straight clear through. You wait and see how father is, after this trouble. All his life he has been petted by mother, who adores him; and that not too agreeable cousin Archibald said the truth about his having had so easy a path all his life. I tell you it isn't for his children to sit here in judgment upon him, nor criticise anything he does; but one thing I believe, he's had a good hard waking up. He hasn't realized the truth. How should he? Mother has always smiled and smiled and seen to everything. He was a genius. He was never to be disturbed. He never has been. Not till now. Now he has been tumbled off his cushions whack! and presently he'll get up – all right."

"Whe-e-ew! You don't mince matters in speaking of your relatives, do you, sweet sister?"

"Not a bit. Just you wait. All the histories we've ever read, all the tales we've ever heard, of gentlemen and gentlewomen, 'aristocrats,' who have had to suffer anything dreadful, show that they have borne the troubles as no meaner person could. The good there is in being of 'family,' it seems to me, is the self-respect that holds us upright, no matter what blows are dealt."

Again Hallam blew a long note. But he looked at his excited little sister with a new admiration.

"Upon my word, Amy, my dear, you are positively eloquent. Who knows but you may one day take to the 'stump,' become a public orator, and lecture, to fill the coffers of that 'family' of which you are so proud."

"No, thank you. I don't need to go abroad to lecture. I find enough subjects right in my own household. Between you and 'Bony' and Miss Scrubbub my life's a burden to me. Now hear me, both of you; for in the language of 'Bonaparty Gineral Lafayette,' 'there ain't none o' ye got no sense 'cept me,' and 'me' says: Fix up the north chamber for a studio. Put all father's things in there. Fix the middle room, which faces east and the sunrise, for a bedroom; and this warm southwestern one for a private sitting room, for mother darling, where she can retreat to think upon her husband's greatness and her children's folly; and where the sweet blessed thing will never be alone one single minute, unless every other member of the family is sound asleep. So that's for the 'retreating' of Friend Salome Kaye. Oh, that she were here this minute! that I could hug the heart right out of her! Fly around, Amy, 'an' set the house to one side,' à la Friend Adam's old housekeeper."

It was wonderful what four pairs of arms could accomplish when love actuated them. "Spite House" had seemed hopelessly bare and dirty when the little household first entered it, but it was far from that by the end of a week's stay. Bare and bleak and unadorned it was still, and the surroundings seemed to forbid that it would ever be any better. But there was not an inch of its surface, outside or in, that had not been cleaned and polished, by scrubbing or whitewash brush. Even the moss-grown roof had been swept by Fayette, standing barefooted and unsupported on the sloping shingles, while he vigorously attacked them. To Hallam this seemed a desecration. The moss had been the one redeeming feature of the roof's ugliness.

"Saints save us! If we leave go that muck up yon, it'll be like me dressin' for mass an' no rackin' down me hair, so it would. No, Master Hal, if riches we can't have, cleanness we can. An' that's aye more pleasin' to God."

The plain, strong furniture which had been in the house had been placed to best advantage; and in the parents' rooms above, as well as the one family living room below, were gathered all that had been brought from dear Fairacres.

A load of wood and another of coal, which Cleena supposed had been sent by Friend Adam and paid for with her money, gave a comfortable look to the woodshed, and in the storeroom was a bag of flour, a side of bacon, a fair supply of vegetables, and a barrel of apples. These the village grocer's lad had brought in his delivery wagon, and it was useless to ask him by whose order. Since they were needed, however, it was well to take them in and to consider them as belonging with the wood and coal.

Finally, the Saturday afternoon arrived on which Hallam and Amy were to go to the Clove, to pass First Day with Adam Burn and their parents, returning before nightfall with the latter, to begin their reunited family life.

Dressed in their freshest clothes, upon Balaam and Pepita, groomed by the willing hands of Fayette, they journeyed gayly down the slope over the familiar road, eager for their visit and the warm welcome awaiting them.

"Do you know, Amy, it's queer that we've never been about alone much, even on these country roads, till now? Losing our home seems to have broken down ever so many restrictions."

"Well, don't you like it? Doesn't it make you feel freer and healthier?"

"Maybe. I'm not enthusiastic over our poverty. I'd be glad enough to go back to Fairacres."

"So would I, if we could live there honestly. I wouldn't go, not for one day, if I could help it, to live in debt as we did."

"Aren't we living in debt just the same now, and much more uncomfortably?"

"I suppose so; though it's different. This time it isn't going to last, and we haven't shut our eyes to it."

"Why isn't it going to last? How can we stop it? I see nothing ahead except starvation."

"Hallam Kaye, the very first thing you ought to learn is to be cheerful. You don't want to be a dead weight on anybody, do you? Well, you will be if you can't look ahead at all to anything bright. You and I are going to work and mend the family fortunes. Then we're going back to Fairacres and do all the good we can with the money we've earned."

"If I were sound – "

"And sensible, you'd race me again to the gate of the Clove."

Burnside-in-the-Clove was a bonny place. The "burn," from which the farm took its name almost as much as from the family which had dwelt there for generations, ran through the velvet lawn and was spanned by a rustic bridge where the well kept driveway curved toward the roomy house.

"Oh! it's so lovely here. The many, many windows, each more cheery and inviting than its neighbor; the old-fashioned door, opened almost all the time; the hammocks, the benches, the flowers, the cool, sweet dairy – this is a home. I guess I'll make ours here instead of at Fairacres, after all," laughed Amy, as they paced sedately over the gravel, the better to enjoy the scene, and now that they had arrived, in no such haste for the meeting with their people.

"I like to go slowly now, don't you, Hal? Because that makes the pleasure 'long-drawn out' and all the sweeter. In a minute mother's face will be in the doorway, with father looking over her shoulder. Friend Adam, blessed man, will hobble after, if he is not too lame; and then we shall jump off and the 'man' will take the burros, and we will go in and hug everybody all round, and eat the biggest kind of a supper – living on dry bread and milk two meals a day can give an appetite! And then one of dear old Adam's 'Spirit' talks; and bed and sleep, and breakfast and meeting, and – "

"'Spite House'!"

"No, Hallam, truly not. Our mother couldn't live in such a place. To-morrow a new life will begin on the barren knoll. 'Charity House' she will have it, and wherever our mother goes, softness and kindness and loveliness are sure to follow."

"Yes, that is so," answered the cripple, thoughtfully. "Well, hear me, Amy. I guess I have been about as much of a wet blanket as I could be, but I'm going to try my very hardest to make things easy for father and mother. Just now, as we rode down the valley into all this peace and quiet, I seemed to see myself exactly as I am. Heigho! but look how green the grass is still, late in the year as it is, and how beautiful the vines on the stone walls. The maples are like a golden glory. My father must have been wonderfully soothed by so much loveliness about him, though he's going to feel it all the – "

"Take care, Sir Optimist, that is to be. You're taking the wrong turn, comrade. Come away from the down to 'has been,' and climb to 'will be,' short metre."

It was all as they said. The mother's gentle face in the doorway, looking rested and less faded for the week passed in the society of a simple, noble man; the father's gay and debonair, as Amy remembered it – how long ago, was it? And last of all Friend Adam, in gray attire, his broadbrim crowning his snowy hair, his expression one of childlike happiness and freedom from care.

He welcomed them both with all heartiness, but Amy was dearest. She had always been, perhaps because she bore the name of his long dead wife, and had always seemed to stand as a child to his childless life.

So after the fine supper was over, while before a blazing fire in another room Mr. and Mrs. Kaye discussed with Hallam all the events of the past week, Amy and the old man who had lived for more than eighty years a blameless, helpful life sat by a window in another place and looked out into the moonlight saying little, but enjoying all.

"Dear father Adam, shall I tell thee" – for with him she always drifted into the sweet speech which was hers by birthright and his for all his life – "shall I tell thee how it seems to me, as if thee had learned every single lesson life and God has had to teach. Thee has had poverty and sorrow, and endured the wrong that others have done thee. Thee has seen thy kindred go away and leave thee alone. It is just like a good soldier who has been in a thick fight and a sailor who has swam in deep waters, but has come out safe on the other side. Thee is so calm and happy, like Mrs. Jones's little Belinda, who sits in the sun and sings and croons to herself, with never a plaything or anything good about her except her own serene happiness. Isn't it?"

"Maybe, child. It may be. It should be, certainly. There should be no care in either extreme of life. Both ends are so close to the Father's house.

"Thee is right though, about the middle of life, little Amy. It is a time of struggle and rebuff."

"But to-night it seems as if it could never have been so with thee. Tell me, father Adam, how thee has kept thyself so simple and good."

"Nay, little one, not that. Simple, indeed, but not good. There is none good but One. Yet there are certain things that help. I'll tell thee what has helped me most, that is, in my daily life in the world, from which we can never escape while the heart beats."

The dear old man rose, limped toward an ancient secretary, and took from it a small book. Just an ordinary account book, ruled for the keeping of small affairs, but arranged with every page inscribed by the trembling fingers of this all-thoughtful friend.

"I have been thinking what a muddle it would be to thee, Amy, and I fixed this for thee. On one side is the debt and the other side the credit. Thee will have to keep the reckonings for thy family, I foresee; for thee is practical. Look. Is the light sufficient?"

Amy held the little volume so that the rays of the harvest moon fell clearly over them, and the old, quaint script was as legible as copperplate. She questioned, and he explained just how the book should be kept, and she found his "system" exceeding plain and direct, as was everything about him. But there were two legends inscribed upon the covers which had little in common with the figuring to be done between them, – or so Amy thought; and when she asked him what they meant, he quietly explained: —