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As he looked about the cheery table after grace was concluded, Nathan Whitney could hardly believe his own senses that he was really here and by invitation. He rubbed his eyes and almost thought he must be dreaming. For this cause he answered but briefly the opening remarks directed to him, and mainly by "Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am," "Yes, sir," and "No, sir."

But David with rare tact began to tell a story with a point so humorous that Nathan forgot his new surroundings and laughed. After that the ice was broken and he talked more freely, and gradually his awe melted so that he was able to do a boy's full justice to the good things that Miranda had with joy prepared.

The talk drifted to the telegraph, for David felt a deep and vital interest in the great invention, and could not keep away long from the subject. Marcia too was just as interested and ready with keen and intelligent questions to which the boy listened appreciatively. He had a boy's natural keenness for mechanical appliances, but no one had ever taken the trouble to explain the telegraph to him. David saw the boy's bright eyes watching him fascinated as he attempted to describe to Marcia the principle on which the wonderful new instrument was supposed to work, and went into detail more than he would have needed to do for Marcia, who had been following each account in the papers as eagerly as if she were a man; and who, understanding, helped along by asking questions, until the boy himself ventured one or two.

David was pleased to see in his questions a high degree of understanding and insight, and his heart warmed quickly toward the young fellow. He forgot entirely that he was putting the guest through an examination at the instigation of his maiden aunts and for the sake of protecting his young daughter. Perhaps he had never had any such idea in "getting acquainted" with Nathan, but certain it is that he did not expect the process of getting acquainted to be so altogether interesting and gratifying. He understood at once why Marcia had said he was "unusual if you could only get at his real soul." As they talked the boy's face had brightened until it fairly glowed with the pleasure of his surroundings and forgetfulness of his usual feeling that he was in some measure considered an outlaw.

David had made quite a study of the telegraph, having been present several times by special invitation when Professor Morse gave an exhibition of his instrument at work to a few scientific friends. He could therefore speak from an intimate knowledge of his subject. The boy listened in charmed silence and at last broke forth:

"Why doesn't he make a telegraph himself and start it working so everybody can use it?"

David explained how expensive it was to prepare the wire, insulate it, and make the necessary parts of the instrument. Then he told him of the bill of appropriation for testing it that was before Congress at the time. The boy's eyes shone.

"It'll be great if Congress lets him have all that money to try it, I think, don't you? It'll be sure to succeed, won't it?"

“I think so,” said David with conviction. "I am firmly convinced that the telegraph has come to stay. But it is not strange that people doubt it. It is even a more wonderful invention than the railroad. Why, it is only about fifteen years since people were hooting and crying out against the idea of the steam railway and now look how many we have, and how indispensable to travel it has become."

The boy looked at the man admiringly. "Say, you go on the railroad a lot, don't you?"

"Why, yes," said David. "My business makes it necessary for me to run up to New York very frequently. You've been on it, of course?"

The boy's face took on a look of great amusement.

"Me? Oh, no! I've never been, and never expect to have the chance, but it must be a great experience. I've tried to think how it would feel going along like that without anything really pulling you. I've dreamed lots of times about taking a ride on the railroad, but I guess that's as near as I'll ever get to it."

"Well, I don't see why," said David reflectively. "Suppose you go up with me the next time I go. I'd like to have company and I can explain to you all about it. I know the engineer well and he'll show us about the workings of the engine. Come, will you go?"

"Will I go?" exclaimed Nathan too much excited to choose his words. "Well I guess I will if I get the chance. Do you mean it, Mr. Spafford?"

"Certainly," said David smiling. "I shall be delighted to have your company. I shall probably go a week from to-day. Can you get away from school?"

Nathan's face darkened.

"I guess there isn't any school going to keep me out of that chance," he said threateningly.

"Would you like me to speak to your father about it?”

"Father won't care," said the boy looking up in surprise. "He never knows where I am, just so I don't bother him."

A fleeting wave of pity swept over Marcia's face as she took in what this must mean to the boy, but David, seeing this was a sore point, said pleasantly:

"I'll make that all right for you," and passed on to discuss the difference the steam railway had made in the length of time it took to go from one city to another, and the consequent ease with which business could be transacted between places at a distance from one another; and from that they went on to speculating about the changes that might come with the telegraph.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to get a message from Washington in half an hour, for instance?" said David. "Professor Morse claims it is possible. Many doubt it, but I am inclined to believe he knows what he is about and to think that it is only a question of time before we have telegraphs all over the United States, at least in the larger cities and towns.”

Nathan's eyes were large.

“Say, it's a big time to be living in, isn't it?”

"It is indeed," said David, his eyes sparkling appreciatively, "but after all, have you ever thought that almost any time is a big time to be living in for a boy or a man who has a work to do in the world? It was beautiful to see the waves of feeling go over the boy's face in rich coloring, and deep sparkling of his eyes, and David could but admire him as he watched. What could people mean that they had let this boy remain with the mark of evil upon his reputation? Why had no one tried to pull him out of his lawless ways before? Why had he never tried? What was Mr. Whitney thinking of to let a boy like this go to ruin as everybody said he was going? David resolved that he should never go if effort of his could help save him.

While they talked the Johnny-cake, biscuits, cold ham, fried potatoes, tea-cakes, jam, preserves and cake had been disappearing in large quantities, and the time seemed at last to have arrived when the boy could eat no more. Marcia made a little motion to rise.

"We'll go in the other room for worship," she said, and led the way to the parlor where Miranda had quietly preceded them and lit the candles. There was an open fire in the fireplace here too, and the room was bright and cheery with stately reflections in polished

mahogany furniture and long mirrors. Nathan hung back at the door and looked about almost in awe. He had not been in this room when he came to the house at other times and it seemed like entering a new world, but almost instantly his attention was held by the pianoforte that stood at one side of the room, and he forgot for the moment his shyness over the idea of "worship," which had brought a sudden tightness around his heart when Marcia mentioned it.

Worship in the Whitney home was a dull and stately form, long drawn out and wearisome to the flesh. Nathan had escaped it of late years, and neither father's nor step-mother's reprimands had sufficed to make him even an occasional attendant, so that when David Spafford had invited him to supper it had not occurred to him that family worship would be a part of the evening's program though if he had stopped to think he might have known, for David was an elder in the church, and it was a strange thing for any respectable family of the church to be without family worship in that day. It was a mark of respectability if nothing else.

Miranda was sitting primly in her chair by the door with her hands folded in her lap and her most seraphic look on her merry face. One might almost say she seemed glorified to-night, her satisfaction beamed so effulgently from every golden freckle and every gleaming copper wave of her hair.

Nathan dropped suddenly into the chair on the other side of the door, feeling awkward and out of place for the first time since his host had welcomed him and made him feel at home. Here in this stately "company" room, with a religious service before him, he was again keenly aware of his own short-comings in the community. He did not belong here and he was a fool to have come. The sullen scowl involuntarily darkened his brow as Rose slipped about the room giving each one a hymn book,—for all the world like church. Nathan took the book reluctantly because she gave it, but his self-consciousness was so great that he dropped it awkwardly, and stooping to pick it up his face grew red with embarrassment.

Marcia, noticing, tried to put him at his ease. "What hymn do you like best, Nathan?" she asked, but the boy only turned the redder and mumbled that he didn't know.

"Then we'll sing the shepherd psalm. Rose is fond of that," she said, seating herself at the pianoforte.

Nathan fumbled the leaves until he found the place, and then was suddenly entranced with the first notes of the tune as Marcia began to play it over.

Now it happened that the shepherd psalm was the one young Nathan could remember hearing his mother sing to him when he was little. She had sung it, too, to the twins and Samuel when they were babies, and it was associated in his mind with her gentle voice, her smiling eyes and the feel of her arms about him as she tucked him in at night, so when the song burst forth from the lips of the family the young guest had much ado to keep back a great lump that arose in his throat, and to control a strange moisture that stole into his eyes.

“The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want;

He makes me down to lie

In pastures green, He leadeth me

The quiet waters by——”

Miranda's voice was high and clear while little Rose, sitting in the shelter of her father's arm, joined her bird-like treble to his bass, and Marcia sang alto, blending the whole most exquisitely. Nathan stole a covert glance about, saw they were not noticing him at all, and presently he forgot his own strange situation and began to grumble out the air:

“My table thou hast furnished

In presence of my foes;—”

(How he wished those Spofford aunts were there to see him sitting thus!—")

“My head thou dost with oil anoint

And my cup overflows."

He had a faint idea that it was overflowing now.

"Goodness and mercy all my life

Shall surely follow me;

And in God's house forevermore

My dwelling-place shall be."

Would it? Wouldn't that be strange? Would his enemies be surprised some day if they should find him dwelling in heaven?

They were only fleeting thoughts passing through his mind, but the psalm that David read when the hymn was done kept up the thought, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation."

Nathan looked down at his rough boy-hands, scrubbed till they showed the lines of walnut stain from his afternoon's climbing after nuts. Clean bands and a pure heart? The hands could be got cleaner by continued washings,—but the heart?

The boy was still thinking about it when they knelt to pray, and he heard himself prayed for as "our dear young friend who is with us to-night" and a blessing asked on his "promising young life." It was almost too much for Nathan, and if the prayer had not branched off into matters of national importance in a strain of thanksgiving for all the wonders wrought in this generation," and a petition for the President and his Cabinet that they might have light and wisdom to decide the important questions that were placed in their keeping, it is doubtful whether Nathan would have got through without disgracing himself by the shedding of a tear in. his excitement.

He rose from his knees with an uplifted expression on his face and looked about on the room and these dear people as if he had suddenly found himself companying with angels.

Miranda bustled out to clear off the table. Marcia called Nathan and Rose to the piano, and they all sang a few minutes, then she played one or two gay melodies for them. After that they all went into the library and gathering around the big carved table played jackstraws until it was Rose’s bedtime. When Miranda finished the dishes she too came and took a hand in the game, and kept them all laughing with her quaint remarks, talking about the jackstraws as if they were people.

When the big hall clock struck the half hour after eight Rose looked regretfully at her mother and meeting her nod and smile arose obediently, and said goodnite. Nathan, taking her hand awkwardly for goodnite, arose also to make his adieus, but David told him to sit down for a few minutes, he wanted to talk to him. So while Marcia and Rose slipped away upstairs, and Miranda went to set the buckwheat cakes for breakfast, Nathan settled back half scared and faced the pleasant smile of his host, wondering if he was to be called to account for some of his numerous pranks and if, after all, the happy time had only been a ruse to get him in a corner.

But David did not leave him in uncertainty long.

"What are you going to do with your life, Nathan?" he asked kindly.

"Do with it?" asked the surprised Nathan. "Do with it?" Then his brow darkened. "Nothing, I s'pose."

"Oh no, you don't mean that I'm sure. You're too bright a boy for that, and this is a great age in which to be living, you know. You've got a big man's work to do somewhere in the world. Are you getting ready for it or are you just drifting yet?"

“Just drifting, I guess,” said Nathan softly after considering.

"Don't see any chance for anything else," he added apologetically. "Nobody cares what I do anyway” (fiercely).

"Oh, that's nonsense. Why—Nathan—I care. I like you, and I want to see you succeed."

A warm red wave of delight flowed over the boy's face and neck, and his eyes flashed one wondering, grateful glance at David. He wanted to say something but couldn't. Words would choke him.

"You're going to college, of course?" said David as a matter of course.

Nathan shook his head.

"How could I?" he asked. "Father'd never send me. He says any money spent on me is thrown away. He was going to send my half-brother Allan to college but he ran away, and he says he'll never send any of the rest of us--"

"Well, send yourself," said David as if it were quite the expected thing to have a loving parent talk like that. "It will really be the best thing for you in the end anyway. A boy that has to pay his own way makes twice as much of college as the fellow who has everything made easy for him, and I guess you've got grit enough to do it. Get a job right away and begin to lay up money."

"Get a job! Me get a job!" laughed Nathan. "Why, nobody'd give me a regular job that I could earn anything much with. They don't like me well enough. They wouldn't trust me. I can get errands and little things to do, but nobody would give me anything worth while."

"Why is that?" David looked keenly but kindly at him.

The boy blushed, and dropped his eyes. At last he answered:

"My own fault, I guess," and smiled as if he were sorry.

"Oh, well, you can soon make that right by showing them you are trustworthy now, you know."

"No," said the boy decidedly, "it's too late. Nobody in this town will give me the chance."

"I will," said David. "I'll give you a job in the printing office if you would like it."

"Wouldn't I though!" said the boy springing to his feet in his excitement. "You just try me. Do you really mean it?"

"Yes, I mean it," said David smiling. "But how about the school?"

"Hang the school," said Nathan frowning. "I want to go to work."

"No, it won't do to hang the school, because then you'll never be able to hold your own working, nor reach up to the bigger things when you have learned the smaller ones. How far have you got in school? What are you studying?”

Nathan told him gloomily, and it was plain there was little interest in the boy's mind for his school.

"I been through it all before anyway," he added. "This teacher doesn't know as much as my—as—that is—as Miss Bent did." His face was very red, for he couldn't bring himself to speak of his father's wife as mother. David was quick to catch the idea.

"I see, you are merely going over the old ground and it isn't very interesting. How thoroughly did you know it before?”

Nathan shook his head.

"Don't know, guess I didn't study very hard, but what's the use? They never gave me credit anyway for what I did do."

"Had any Latin?" David thought it better to ignore a discussion of teachers. He did not think much of the present incumbent himself.

"No."

"Are you in the highest class?”

“Yes.”

“What would you think of leaving school and working in the printing office daytimes, and studying Latin and mathematics with me evenings?"

The boy was dumb. He looked at David for a moment, and then dropped his eyes and swallowed hard several times. When he finally raised his eyes again they were full of tears, and this time the boy was not ashamed of them.

“What would you do it for?" he asked when he could speak, his voice utterly broken down with feeling.

“Well, just because I like you and I want to see you get on; and besides, I think I would enjoy it. I’m glad you like the idea. We’ll see what can be done. I think in two years at most you might be ready for college if you put in your time well, and by that time you ought to have saved enough to at least start you. There’ll be ways to earn your board when you get to college. Lots of fellows do it. Shall I see your father about it, or would you rather do it yourself?”

“Father?” said Nathan wondering again. “Why you don’t need to see father. I never ask him about anything. He’d rather not be bothered.”

Subsequent experience led David to believe that Nathan was right, for when he went to see Mr. Whitney that grim and unnatural parent strongly advised David to have nothing whatever to do with his scapegrace son, and declared himself unwilling to be responsible for any failure that might ensure if he went contrary to this advice. He said that Nathan was like his mother, not practical in any way, and that he had been nothing but a source of anxiety since he was born, and he had only kept him at school because he did not know what else to do with him. He never expected him to amount to a row of pins. With this encouragement David Spafford undertook the higher education of young Nathan Whitney, strongly suspecting that the father's lack of interest in the son's welfare had its source in an inherent miserliness. Mr. Whitney, however, gave a reluctant permission for his son to leave school and learn the printing business in the office of the Clarion Call; but vowed that he would not assist him to fool his time away and spend money pretending he was getting a college education, and if he left school now he needn't do it with any expectation of getting a penny from him for any such nonsense, for he wouldn't give it.

However, David was wise enough that night to say nothing further to the boy about consulting his father, merely telling him, as he said good-night, that he would expect him to be ready to go to New York with him a week from that day on the early morning train, and that they then would look after purchasing some Latin books, and perhaps get time to run over to the University and find out about entrance requirements so that their work might be intelligent. In the meantime it would be well for Nathan to finish out the week at school, as it was now Wednesday. That would give time to arrange matters at the office, and with his father; then if all was satisfactory he might come to the office Monday morning. There were things he could do both in preparation for the journey and while they were away to help with business, and his salary would begin Monday morning. It wouldn't be much at first, but he might consider that his work began Monday, and that the trip to New York was all in the way of business.

With a heart almost bursting with wonder and joy, and eyes that shone as bright as any of the stars over his head, Nathan walked across the street to his home, ascended a tree to his bedroom window, for he could not bear the sight of anyone just yet, and crept to his bed, where, kneeling with his face in the pillow, he tried to express in a queer little lonely prayer his praise for the great thing that had come to him, mingled with a wistful desire for the “pure heart and clean hands" for those who had a right to the blessing of the Lord. With all his heart he meant to do his part toward making good.

Across the street, high in the side gable, there twinkled the candle of Miranda for a few minutes, and then went out while the owner sat at the window, looking out on the field of stars above her, and thinking deep, wide thoughts.

Now Miranda was the soul of honor on most occasions, but if there came a time when it was to the advantage of those she loved for her to do a little quiet eavesdropping, or to stretch the truth so it would fit a particularly trying circumstance, she generally was able to get a reprieve from her conscience long enough to do it. Therefore, while David had been talking with Nathan in the library, Miranda had had a sudden call to hunt for something in the hall closet, which was located so close to the library door that one standing in the crack of one door might easily hear whole sentences of what was spoken behind the crack of the other door. Miranda would have scorned to listen if the visitor had been a grown-up on business, and she never allowed herself this indulgence unless she felt the inner call to help some one or protect them. To-night it was her great anxiety for Nathan that caused her to look so diligently for her overshoes, which she knew very well were standing neatly in their appointed place in her own closet upstairs. But she heard a great deal of what David proposed to do for Nathan and her heart swelled with pride and joy; pride in David and his wonderful little wife whom she knew was at the bottom of the whole scheme, and joy for Nathan of whom she was grown greatly fond, and for whose reputation and uplifting she was intensely jealous. So it was with a light heart and feet that almost danced that she took her candle-lit way to her little pine room, and after a few simple preparations for the night, put out the light and sat down under the stars to think.