payment,--and the additional two dollars were turned over.

"Some o' Leckler's work," said Eckley, "teaching a nigger to cipher!
Close-fisted old reprobate,--I've a mind to have the law on him." Mr.
Leckler heard the story with great glee. "I laid for him that
time--the old fox." But to Mrs. Leckler he said: "You see, my dear
wife, my rashness in teaching Josh to figure for himself is
vindicated. See what he has saved for himself."

"What did he save?" asked the little woman indiscreetly.

Her husband blushed and stammered for a moment, and then replied,
"Well, of course, it was only twenty cents saved to him, but to a man
buying his freedom every cent counts; and after all, it is not the
amount, Mrs. Leckler, it's the principle of the thing."

"Yes," said the lady meekly.


II


Unto the body it is easy for the master to say, "Thus far shalt thou
go, and no farther." Gyves, chains and fetters will enforce that
command. But what master shall say unto the mind, "Here do I set the
limit of your acquisition. Pass it not"? Who shall put gyves upon the
intellect, or fetter the movement of thought? Joshua Leckler, as
custom denominated him, had tasted of the forbidden fruit, and his
appetite had grown by what it fed on. Night after night he crouched
in his lonely cabin, by the blaze of a fat pine brand, poring over the