were of
interest to "Dodd" Weaver. In the evolution of this young hopeful they
played an important part. They were hindrances to the boy at the very
outset of his course in the public schools. They begot in him habits
and dislikes which it took years to efface, and from which it is
doubtful if he ever did fully recover. There are multitudes in like
case, and what are we going to do about it?

CHAPTER V.

The severity of the duties, pastoral and paternal, that fell to the lot
of Elder Weaver, wore rapidly upon the constitution of that worthy
gentleman, and when "Dodd" was nine years old his father found it
necessary to retire from the pulpit, for a year at least, and, as is
usual in such cases, he went to that refuge for fagged out ministers of
all denominations, the old homestead of his wife's parents.

From this rustic domicile he had led the youngest daughter, a buxom
bride, ten years before; to it he now returned with her and with seven
small children besides. An ambitious young man and a healthy young
woman, a decade before, they came back to the threshold from which they
had gone out, he, broken in spirit and as poor in purse as in purpose;
she, worn and faded, yet trying hard to seem cheerful as she came
within the sunlight of the old home again.

The old people lengthened the cords and strengthened the stakes of
their simple home, and made the Elder and his wife, and the seven
children ("seven devils," an irreverent sister once called them in a
burst of indignation at the state of affairs) as comfortable as
possible. To be sure grandpa and grandma Stebbins were old, and it was
long since there had been children in the house, but they had enough
and to spare in crib and pantry, and they had lived sufficiently long
in this world to accept the inevitable without a murmur.

But for all of that, the children were a source of a good deal of
annoyance to the old people, especially until they were brought
somewhat under subjection by the faithful hand of the old gentleman,
who found that he should have to stand up for his own in the premises
or submit to the unendurable.

The first real climax occurred on the second day of the quartering of
the family thus, and "Dodd" was the boy who brought matters to a focus.

The month was October, and down in the yard, a few feet from the
bee-hives, just beyond the shadow of the weeping-willow that stood near
the well, and along the row of gooseberry bushes under