filment of the ambition he had nourished until it had become a part of him, the plans for restitution to the old man whom his conscience told him he had wronged. On the eleventh day, the answering letter came. Joe opened it with trembling fingers, read it once hurriedly, and then a second and a third time more slowly, each time with greater satisfaction. The next day he took the train for home.

It was a very different boy from the one who had left that country two years before, who arrived at the station late the following afternoon. This boy was far more dapper and more business-like in his manner. He moved more quickly, the expression of his eyes was keener and more observant; he had a poise that came from intelligence won from contact with progressive men.

And yet the country had never seemed more beautiful to him. In the west the sun was setting gloriously, spreading its last weakening rays over the fields and into the available spots of the forest land, as the shadows of twilight fell. Over all the world there seemed to be the wonderful sense of country peace. For two years Joe had known nothing so beautiful.

True to his city principles, however, he wasted no time before performing the errand that had brought him home. All that evening he spent closeted with Simpson in the latter's front parlor, talking, arguing, drawing on papers; and from that room Joe emerged finally, content, at least for the moment, with all the world.

There was one more thing to do before he could rest in satisfaction. Early the next morning, before it was time to open, he sought Amos Jones's store, delightfully aware that now he could greet his old employer with a free conscience. He waited impatiently on the front doorstep for the old man to appear.

"Well, Joey," said Amos after the first astonished greeting, laying his hand on the broad fellow's shoulder. "What a young man we are, and so citified too. Whoever 'd thought it? Well, I'm glad to see you. I'm mighty glad to see you, come right along in."

"I'd like to speak to you privately on a little matter of business, Amos, if I may," said Joe as Amos opened the store-door.

"Certainly, certainly," Amos answered. "We'll set down right here. Nobody's likely to come in this time o' the mornin', 'specially in haying time. Here, Jim," he called to a small boy who was lounging on the counter, "you run along out, until I call you."

"Amos," said Joe again, after they were comfortably settled, "I'm coming back into this part of the country to live. Last night, I made a bargain with Simpson to buy him out, and made my first payment on his stock."

The old man grabbed both arms of his chair, and leaned forward, while his lower jaw fell. "Bought Simpson out?" he exclaimed after a long gasp.

"Yes," went on Joe. "And what I wanted to see you about was to know if you and I could n't come to some settlement about a partnership. There never ought to be more than one store in this neighborhood, and I think you and I could make a pretty good team, and make a success of things. I've had quite a little experience in the city lately and have got some new ideas. It would be pretty lucky for me if I could work them out with a man who has had your long experience, and is so well known everywhere. Would you be willing to think about it?"

The old man, who had been sitting on the edge of his chair waiting with great impatience for Joe to finish speaking, rose in stiff eagerness and grasped Joe by both shoulders.

"Do it?" he cried in jubilant tones. "Do it? Well I just guess I will. Don't you know, Joey, there ain't anything in the world could make me happier. But," he added, his eyes suddenly clouding, "my business ain't so much any more."

"Then we'll make it something," returned Joe confidently, smiling in the old man's face.

As he read the answering expression of the face above his, with its happiness and content, Joe was set to thinking. The experience he had gained for himself was much. So was the position he had won, and the hope it had given him for the future, but this was the best of all,— the happiness he had brought to this old man. of simple faith and child-like confidence.

MAYBE you would like to hear how little Dug learned O. One day when he was studying it his mind got tired, and then he went out of the garden gate and down the dusty road. He had on a new sailor suit and he marched along stamping his feet in the deep dust. When he had got covered with dust from head to foot it began to rain. Just as the summer shower was coming down hard he arrived at the pottery.

"Ha! ha!" laughed the potter as he saw Dug; "you are mud from head to foot. If I put you in the oven now, you would bake hard and be a crockery boy. Then I could sell you to some one to put in the parlor."

Dug wanted him to do it, but he would not.

As Dug came in the building among the many kinds of pottery he was reminded of the ring of clay that his grandfather had left to be hardened in the fire.

"Have you got our mud cooked yet?" he asked the potter.

And the potter, thinking that his grandfather had sent him for it, gave it to him. Now the ring of clay was as hard as stone, for it had been in the oven with the crockery. When the rain stopped Dug went away, carrying it on his arm.

"It is a nice ring-jug, and I will take it with

me everywhere," he said. He made up that name for it because he did not know it was a crockery O. The rain had made mud of all the dust on his sailor suit. And when he had dried in the bright sunshine he looked as if he had just come out of the potter's oven along with the crockery O.

Before long Dug came to the Pike, the long road that runs across Maryland and Pennsylvania and West Virginia and Ohio and Indiana and Illinois. All that Dug remembered was that it was the way to New York, and now he decided that this would be a good time to go there. He marched along quickly, for it was already late in the afternoon.

When he came to the bridge with three ends he went into one of the hallways and kept

"ONE DAY WHEN HE WAS STUDYING IT, HIS MIND GOT TIRED."

marching on. Now this is the bridge that was built like a Y, and each branch of it had four hallways: the two big hallways for horses and the two small ones for the people who walked. And it is the law in that city that horses and

And the fat man stood to see whether Dug would back out, for that is what a horse has to do when he goes into the bridge on the wrong side and meets another horse. But Dug did not make a move until the fat man walked around him. And then Dug kept on till he came to the big room in the middle of the river. It had a roof on it like a barn, and the sides were just twelve hallways leading away through the three bridges that met there.

When Dug saw the twelve hallways leading away in different directions he stopped in the big room and thought of all his aunts and uncles. He had dozens of them in different parts of the city, and it kept him very busy visiting one and another. He was the only boy, and they all wanted him all the time.

Well, Dug was rather tired walking through the mud, and so he thought that before he went to New York he would go and see one of his aunts. So now he had to make up his mind which way he would go. He said to himself: "If I go that way I can see the new pigs; and if I go this way I can have marmalade and cross-bar pie; and if I go the other way I will come to my uncle who has a shoe-store, and I can play with the colored leather and get a base-ball."

First he started in the direction of the marmalade and pie, but when he got to that hallway and thought of how he was leaving the pigs and the base-ball behind, he stopped. Then when he thought how nice it would be to see the new pigs he went over to that hallway. And then he found he really wanted

the marmalade and cross-bar pie and the baseHe wanted the base-ball especially, and so, as he thought of all the fun he would have with it, he started into the hallway that led over to that uncle's place. But he had not gone far when he found that he wanted all the other things more than ever. He had not intended to leave the marmalade behind. He came back and stood in the big room thinking it over, looking down all the halls and imagining all the things he would get at the different places. He tried one way, and then he tried another way again when he thought he had changed his mind; but it was always the same. First it was the marmalade and the crossbar pie, and then it was the pigs, and then it was the base-ball; and whichever way he went, he would have to give up two things for the sake of only one. It made him sad to think of such a thing; for the truth of the matter was that he wanted them all. He could not choose only one of them. And when he stood in the big room and looked down all the hallways he saw that he could n't make up his mind to go in any direction. And so there was nothing for Dug to do but to stand there in the big room out in the middle of the river and think of all the different things and not have any of them. Well, he tried again and again, and finally when he saw how things were it made him feel so tired that he had to cry. So he stood there with the crockery O on his arm and cried and wiped the tears away till the dirt on his face was all mud again.

somewhere at the end of one of the long halls. Dug could hear him in the distance coming on slowly and heavily, pounding his big hoofs on the floor of the bridge. The sound of it came nearer and nearer, filling the big roomthump, thump-thump, thump!

When Dug looked down the hall he stopped crying at once, for it was the face of old "Fly." Fly had a white streak on her face, and so he could see that it was his grandfather's big sorrel mare. But Dug knew her so well that he

A big wagon with four horses came with a great noise across the room and turned into one of the hallways and went rolling away like thunder. Dug had to cry louder so that he could hear himself above the noise.

Presently the room in the bridge was quiet, as if there were no team in any of the halls. Just then a horse stepped on to the bridge

would have known old Fly even if she had a face like other horses. He wiped the mud out of his eyes and wiped his fingers clean on a wooden post. Then he stood waiting with the crockery 'O' in his hand. Old Fly was coming on slowly and solemnly, as if she were thinking about something; and she kept turning her ears this way and that, listening to all the noise she made. As she came nearer, Dug began to smile. If there was one thing he did like more than another, it was to ride with his grandfather in the buggy. Now he forgot all about the pigs and the pie and the baseball and the marmalade and all the things he had wanted so much a little while before.