the handicap of his birth. Her morning's work was done and without saying
anything to Hugh, who continued to go up and down the platform laboriously
sweeping, she went out at the front door of the house and to one of
the town stores. There she bought a half dozen books, a geography, an
arithmetic, a speller and two or three readers. She had made up her mind to
become Hugh McVey's school teacher and with characteristic energy did not
put the matter off, but went about it at once. When she got back to her
house and saw the boy still going doggedly up and down the platform,
she did not scold but spoke to him with a new gentleness in her manner.
"Well, my boy, you may put the broom away now and come to the house," she
suggested. "I've made up my mind to take you for my own boy and I don't
want to be ashamed of you. If you're going to live with me I can't have you
growing up to be a lazy good-for-nothing like your father and the other men
in this hole of a place. You'll have to learn things and I suppose I'll
have to be your teacher.

"Come on over to the house at once," she added sharply, making a quick
motion with her hand to the boy who with the broom in his hands stood
stupidly staring. "When a job is to be done there's no use putting it off.
It's going to be hard work to make an educated man of you, but it has to be
done. We might as well begin on your lessons at once."

* * * * *

Hugh McVey lived with Henry Shepard and his wife until he became a grown
man. After Sarah Shepard became his school teacher things began to go
better for him. The scolding of the New England woman, that had but
accentuated his awkwardness and stupidity, came to an end and life in his
adopted home became so quiet and peaceful that the boy thought of himself
as one who had come into a kind of paradise. For a time the two older