This was the foundation of a curious kind of friendship between Abel
and the miller's man.

On the same shelf with the "Vamly Bible," before alluded to, was a
real old horn-book, which had belonged to the windmiller's
grandmother. It was simply a sheet on which the letters of the
alphabet, and some few words of one syllable, were printed, and it
was protected in its frame by a transparent front of thin horn,
through which the letters could be read, just as one sees the prints
through the ground-glass of "drawing slates."

From this horn-book Abel labored patiently in teaching George his
letters. It was no light task. George had all the cunning and
shrewdness with which he credited himself; but a denser head for any
intellectual effort could hardly have been found for the seeking.
Still they struggled on, and as George went about the mill he might
have been heard muttering, -

"A B C G. No! Cuss me for a vool! A B C _D_. Why didn't they
whop my letters into I when a was a boy? A B C"--and so persevering
with an industry which he commonly kept for works of mischief.

One evening he brought home a newspaper from the Heart of Oak, and
when Mrs. Lake had taken the baby, he persuaded Abel to come into
the round-house and give him a lesson. Abel could read so much of
it that George was quite overwhelmed by his learning.

"Thee be's mortal larned, Abel, sartinly. But I'll never read like
thee," he added, despairingly. "Drattle th' old witch; why didn't
she give I some schooling?" He spoke with spiteful emphasis, and