"They are yours," she said. "They were bought with your money, and you are to read them this summer. This one is Ivanhoe,' and was written by a very famous man named Sir Walter Scott; this is 'David Copperfield,' and was written by Charles Dickens; this is 'Henry Esmond,' and was written by William Makepeace Thackeray; and this last one is 'Lorna Doone,' by Richard Doddridge Blackmore. They are among the greatest stories that have ever been written in the English language, and I want you to read them over and over. You may not understand quite all of them at first, but I think you will after a time. If there is anything you find you cannot understand, go to Mr. Bayliss at the church, and ask him about it. He has told me that he will be glad to help you."

Tommy tied up his treasures again, too overcome by their munificence to speak, and when he started for home that noon, he was holding them close against his breast.

Miss Andrews looked after him as he went, and wondered, for the hundredth time, if the books she had given him had been the wisest selection. His first youth was past, she reasoned, and he must make the most of what remained. So she had decided upon these four masterpieces. She sighed as she turned away from the door, perhaps with envy at thought of the rare delights which lay before him in the wonderful countries he was about to enter.

CHAPTER IV.

TOMMY ROAMS IN AN ENCHANTED LAND.

AND what delights they were, when once he found time to taste of them! He was kept busy at his studies until school closed, as it did one Friday in early June, and that afternoon he said good-by to his teacher and saw her whisked away eastward to the home she loved. He went from the station to the mine with heavy heart, and labored there with his father until evening came. He did not open his books that night, for he was just beginning to realize all that his teacher had been to him and how he had come to rely upon her for encouragement and help. All day Saturday he worked in the mine with his father. But Sunday

He read it stumblingly and haltingly; as his teacher had foreseen, many of the words were quite beyond him; but it was written in English so pure, so clear, so simple, that little of importance escaped him. And what a world of enchantment it opened to him! -the wide moorlands of Exmoor, the narrow Doone valley, the water-slide, the great London road. And what people, too!-the lawless Doones, Captain, Counselor, Carver, who, for all their villainy, had something attractive about them; Lorna, and great John Ridd. Of course he did not catch the full beauty of the book, but of its magic he caught some glimpses, and it bore him quite away from the eventless valley of New River to that other valley where the Doones reigned in all their insolence and pride, and kept Lorna prisoner to be a bride to Carver.

Hunger warned him of the dinner-hour, but he begrudged the time it took to go down to the house, swallow his food, and get back again to his place on the hillside. The afternoon passed almost before he knew it, and the lengthening shadows warned him that evening was at hand. Still he read on, glancing up only now and then to mark how the light was fading, and when it failed altogether it left John just in the midst of his adventures in London. Tommy lay for a long time looking down the valley and thinking over what he had read, and at last, with a sigh, picked up the book and started homeward.

What need to detail further? All summer long he walked in a land of enchantment, whether with John Ridd on Exmoor, with David Copperfield in London, with Richard Lion-heart in Sherwood Forest, or with Henry Esmond at Castlewood.

As he went onward he grew stronger in his reading, and so found the way less difficult, and at last acquired such proficiency that he would read portions of his books aloud to his wondering parents and to Johnny.

Mr. Bayliss found them sitting so one Sunday afternoon, and paused at the porch to listen. Tommy read that last desperate struggle between John Ridd and Carver Doone.

For an instant there was silence. Then, with a sigh, Tommy's father relaxed his attitude of strained attention and dropped back in his chair. "Jee-rusalem!" he said at last. "Ter think of it! Th' bog swallered him up.” Tommy smiled to himself, in his superior knowledge.

"That ain't all,” he said. "There's another chapter."

"Another chapter!" cried his father. on, Tommy."

"Go

And as Tommy turned to the book again, Mr. Bayliss stole away down the path, convinced that this was not the time to make his presence known. On his homeward way he pondered deeply the scene he had just witnessed. Its significance moved him strongly, for he saw a ray of hope ahead for the success of his ministry among this people. Five years before, when he was a senior at the Princeton Theological Seminary, he had chanced upon an open letter in a mission magazine which stated that for miles and miles along this valley there was not a single minister nor church, and so soon as he had been ordained he had journeyed to Wentworth. At first he had held services in an old cabin, but finally secured money enough to build a small church.

But in matters of religion, as in matters of education, he had found the people strangely apathetic. They came to him to be married, and sent for him sometimes in sickness; it was he who committed their bodies to the grave: but, marriages and deaths aside, he had small part in their lives. He saw that some degree

of education must come before there could be deep and genuine spiritual awakening. He had realized the truth of this more than once in his ministry, but most deeply shortly after his arrival, when he had undertaken to distribute some Bibles among the squalid cabins on the hillside.

Do with it? Read it, of course." "But we can't read," said the woman, sullenly. "They ain't no chance t' learn. It's work, work, from sun-up t' dark. Thet 's one reason we-uns don't come down t' them meetin's o' yourn," she went on. "By th' time Sunday comes, we 're too tired t' care fer anything but rest. And then," she added defiantly, "most of us has got so we don't care, noway."

And now at last he saw a glimmering of light. It was only a miner's boy reading to his parents —a little thing, perhaps, yet even little things sometimes lead to great ones. And the minister determined to do all he could for that boy, that he might serve as a guide to others.

He found he could do much. He helped the boy over difficult places in his books, gave him a dictionary that he might find out for himself the meaning of the words, and taught him how to use it. Gradually, as he grew to know him better, the project, which had at first been very vague, began to take shape in his mind.

It was quite a different Tommy from the one. she had known that Miss Andrews found waiting for her when she returned in September to open her school again. His eyes had a new light in them. It was as if a wide, dreary landscape had been suddenly touched and glorified by the sun. So on his face now glowed the sunlight of intelligence and understanding—a light which deep acquaintance with the books Tommy had been reading will bring to any face. She had a talk with him the very first day. "And you liked the books?" she asked. His sparkling eyes gave answer. "Which hero did you like the best?" "Oh, John Ridd," he cried. "John Ridd best. He was so big, so strong, so brave, so—” He paused, at loss for a word.

'Why?

'Oh, if I could!" he cried, with bright face. "I am sure you can. How many children are in your row of houses?"

He stopped for a moment to compute them. "About twenty-five," he said at last.

And how many of them come to school?"
None of them but me."

"Don't you think they ought to come? Are n't you glad that you came?"

"Oh, yes!" cried Tommy.

“Well, I have tried to get them to come, and failed," she said. "Perhaps I did n't know the right way to approach them. Now I want you to try. I believe you will know better how to reach them than I did. You may fail, too, but at any rate you can try.”

“I will try," he said, and that evening he visited all the cabins in the row, one after another. What arts he used was never knownwhat subtleties of flattery and promise. He met with much discouragement; for instance, he could get none of the men to consent to send to school any of the boys who were old enough to help them in the mines; but when he started to school next morning, six small children accompanied him, and among them his brother Johnny. And what a welcome the teacher gave him! She seemed unable to speak for a moment, and her eyes gleamed queerly, but when she did speak, it was with words that sent a curious warmth to his heart.

That half-dozen children was only the first instalment to come from the cabins. Tommy, prizing his teacher's gratitude above everything else, kept resolutely at work, and soon the benches at the school-room began to assume quite a different appearance from that they had had at the opening of school; and one day when Jabez Smith came down to look the school over, he declared that it would soon be necessary to put in some new forms.

"And you were gittin' discouraged," he said, half jestingly, to Miss Andrews. Did n't I

tell you t' stick to it an' you 'd win?"

Mr. Smith looked at him for some moments without speaking.

There must be somethin' in th' boy, Miss Bessie," he said at last. 'We must do somethin' fer him. When you 're ready, let me know. Maybe I kin help." And he went out hastily, before she could answer him.

But the words sang through her brain. "Do something for him"-of course they must do something for him; but what? The question did not long remain unanswered.

It was when she met Mr. Bayliss one Sunday in a walk along the river, and related to him the success of Tommy's efforts, that he broached the project he had been developing.

"The boy must have a chance," he said. "I believe he could do a great work among these people-greater, surely, than I have been able to do. See how he has helped you. Now he must help me."

"But how?" she asked. And old Jabez Smith's promise again recurred to her.

"I have n't thought it out fully, but in outline it is something like this. We will teach him here all that we can teach. Then we 'll send him to the preparatory school at Lawrenceville for the final touches. Then he will enter Princeton, and-if his bent lies as I believe it does-the seminary. Think what he could do, coming back here equipped as such a course would equip him, and having, too, a perfect understanding of the peculiar people he is to work among! Why, I tell you, it would almost work a miracle from one end of this valley to the other."

His companion caught the glow of his enthusiasm. "It would," she cried; "it would. But can he take such a polish? Is he strong enough? Is it not too late?"

"I believe he is strong enough. I believe it is not too late. The only trouble," he added reflectively, "will be about the cost." "The cost?"

"Yes. There will be no question of that after he gets to Princeton, for I can easily get him a scholarship, and there are many ways in which a student can earn money enough to pay his other expenses. But at Lawrenceville it is different."

Miss Andrews looked up with dancing eyes.

ing, after supper, she hunted him out where he sat on the back porch of the house, reflectively smoking his pipe. His preference for the back porch over the front porch was one of his peculiarities. From the front porch one could see the whole sweep of the valley, with its everchanging beauties of light and shade. From the back one nothing was visible but the imminent hillside mounting steeply upward.

To be sure, if one leaned forward in his chair, a glimpse might be had of the mouth of a coal-mine high up on the hillside, and his sister said that it was to look at this that Jabez

enough, for it was from that drift that he had drawn enough money to make his remaining life comfortable. Jabez Smith had come into these mountains while they were yet a wilderness, unknown, or almost so, to white men, save where the highroads crossed them. What circumstance had driven him from his home near Philadelphia was never known, but certain it was that he had plunged alone into the mountains, and battled through them until he had reached the New River valley. Caprice, or perhaps the beauty of the place, moved him to make his home here. He bought two hundred acres of land for half as many dollars, built himself a rude log cabin, and settled down, apparently to spend the remainder of his life in solitude.

Then came the discovery of the great beds of coal, and the building of the railroad through this very valley. His two hundred acres jumped in value to a thousand times what he had paid for them, and when the Great Eastern Coal Company was organized to develop the mines, he sold to them all of the land except a few acres which he reserved for his home. There he had built a comfortable house, and had sent for his widowed sister to come and live with him. He gradually grew to be something of a power in the place, and had been postmaster ever since an office had been established there. It was he who had secured money for the erection of the schoolhouse, and he had been the only local contributor to Mr. Bayliss's church. Still, he was a peculiar man, and bore the reputation of

"Very well, Mr. Smith," she said. "Of course it is a lot of money. I had no right to ask you." And she rose to go. "I'll tell Mr. Bayliss and we will find some other plan."

It was there he was that Sunday evening, and he turned as he heard steps on the porch behind him.

"Ah, Miss Bessie, good evenin'," he said cordially. "Won't y' take a cheer?" And he waved his hand toward a little low rocker that stood in one corner. "I hope y' don't object t' terbaccer," he added, as she brought the chair forward and sat down.

"Do you suppose I should have come here to disturb you if I did?" she retorted laughingly. "I want you to keep on smoking. I know a man is always more inclined to grant a favor when he 's smoking."

He glanced at her quickly, with just a trace of suspicion in his eyes, and moved uneasily in his chair.

"What's th' favor?" he asked.

"You remember I was telling you the other day about Tommy Remington," she began, "and you said something must be done for the boy, and that you wished to help."

"'T was n't exactly thet," he corrected, smiling in spite of himself, "but thet 'll do." Well, we have a plan," she continued-"a good plan, I believe"; and she told him of her talk with Mr. Bayliss.

He sat silent for a long time after she had finished, smoking slowly and looking at the hillside. "I dunno," he said at last. "I dunno. It's a resky thing t' send a boy out thet way. But maybe it'll turn out all right. As I understan', it 'll take nine hunderd dollars t' put it through." "Nine hundred," she nodded.

"Set down," he interrupted, almost roughly. "Set down, an' wait till I git through." She sat down again, looking at him with astonishment not unmixed with fear.

"Now," he continued, "I sed I did n't hev thet much money t' give away, but thet ain't sayin' I ain't got it t' loan. Now I'm a bus'ness man. I don' believe in fosterin' porpers. If this yere Tommy o' yourn shows he 's got th' stuff in him t' make a scholar, an' you git his father t' consent t' his goin' away, I'll tell you what I'll do, jest as a bus'ness proposition. I'll loan him three hunderd dollars at five per cent., t' be paid back when he earns it. Thet 'll pay fer one year, an' I reckon I kin make th’ same proposition when th' second an' third Ef 't takes four years, why, years come round. all right."

He stopped to get his pipe going again, and his hearer started from her chair with glistening eyes.

"Oh, Mr. Smith," she began, but he waved her back.

"Set down, can't you?" he cried, more fiercely than ever; and she sank back again, beginning at last to understand something of this man. "I ain't through yet. When you git ready fer th' money, you come t' me an' I'll make out th' note. You kin take it t' him and let him sign it. But I don' want no pollyfoxin' round me. I won't stand it. You tell th' boy t' keep away from me, an' don't let anybody else know, er I won't loan him a cent.” She sat looking at him, her lips trembling.

Now you mind," he repeated severely, shaking his pipe at her, but not daring to meet her eyes. 'I won't have no foolin'. Promise

"

She was laughing now, her eyes bright with unshed tears.