In time a fair young wife and children came, bringing new
brightness and joy to the serious-minded warden. With ever
increasing interests, he passed on from youth to middle life, and
from middle life to old age. Then his son married, and again the
patter of little feet filled the old home and made music in the
ears of Grandfather Coster, whom the baby grandchildren almost
worshiped.

To amuse the children, and to impart to them whatever knowledge he
himself possessed, became the delight of his old age. Then the
habit acquired in youth of carving letters in the bark of the
trees served a very useful purpose in furthering his object. He
still loved to take solitary walks, and many a quiet summer
afternoon the familiar figure of the venerable churchwarden, in
his seedy black cloak and sugar-loaf hat, might be seen wending
its way along the banks of the River Spaaren to his favorite
resort in the grove.

One day, while reclining on a mossy couch beneath a spreading
beech tree, amusing himself by tearing strips of bark from the
tree that shaded him, and carving letters with his knife, a happy
thought entered his mind. "Why can I not," he mused within
himself, "cut those letters out, carry them home, and, while using
them as playthings, teach the little ones how to read?"

The plan worked admirably. Long practice had made the old man
quite expert in fashioning the letters, and many hours of quiet
happiness were spent in the grove in this pleasing occupation. One
afternoon he succeeded in cutting some unusually fine specimens,
and, chuckling to himself over the delight they would give the