place; but I am sure that Moses, if he were in my place today, would feel
just as I do about discharging Harry. It is pretty safe to assume that he,
even if he did lose his temper at the continual grumbling of the croakers
who were sighing for the flesh-pots of Egypt, never ordered a young
Israelite boy whose father and mother had been bitten by the fiery serpents
and died in the wilderness, to clear out of camp for not putting a halter
on one of the cows."

"John Layton, you are talking Scripture!" remonstrated the perturbed
housewife, looking up reprovingly as she sadly skimmed the cream from the
very last pan of milk poor Brindle would ever give her.

"I certainly am, and I am going to act Scripture, too," declared the
doctor, with the air of gentle firmness that always ended any controversy
between him and his excellent, though somewhat exacting, wife. "Harry is a
good boy, and he had a good mother, too, he says, but he has had a hard
life, ill-treated by a father who was bitten by the fiery serpent of drink.
Now because of his first act of negligence I am not going to send him
adrift in the world again."

"Not if it costs you a cow!" remarked the woman.

"No, my dear, not if it costs me two cows," reasserted the doctor. "A cow
is less than a boy, and it might cost the world a man if I sent Harry away
in a fit of displeasure, disgraced by my discharge so that he could not
find another place in town to work for his board, and go to school.
Besides, Brindle will die anyway, and discharging the boy will not save
her."

"No, of course not. But it was your taking the boy in, a penniless, unknown