David. It was an incident of only a passing moment, and mattered
little more to them than if it had been a horse or a cow which had been
sold instead of a poor feeble old man.

It was the custom which had been going on for years, and it was the
only way they could see out of the difficult problem of dealing with
paupers.

When Jim Goban reached home with his purchase, dinner was ready. There
were five young Gobans who stared curiously upon David as he took his
seat at the table. Mrs. Goban was a thin-face, tired looking woman who
deferred to her husband in everything. There was nothing else for her
to do, as she had found out shortly after their marriage what a brute
he was.

David was pleased at the presence of the children and he often turned
his eyes upon them.

"Nice children," he at length remarked, speaking for the first time
since his arrival.

"So ye think they're nice, do ye?" Jim queried, leaning over and
looking the old man in the eyes.

"Why, yes," David replied, shrinking back somewhat from the coarse
face. "All children are nice to me, but yours are especially fine
ones. What nice hair they have, and such beautiful eyes. I suppose
the oldest go to school."

"Naw. They never saw the inside of a school house."

"You don't say so!" and David looked his astonishment. "Surely there
must be a school near here."

"Oh, yes, there's a school all right, but they've never gone. I don't
set any store by eddication. What good is it to any one, I'd like to
know? Will it help a man to hoe a row of pertaters, or a woman to bake
bread? Now, look at me. I've no eddication, an' yit I've got a good
place here, an' a bank account. You've got eddication, so I
understand, an' what good is it to you? I'm one of the biggest
tax-payers in the parish, an' you, why yer nothing but a pauper, the
Devil's Poor."

At this cruel reminder David shrank back as from a blow, and never
uttered another word during the rest of the meal. The iron was
entering into his soul, and he was beginning to understand something of
the ignominy he was to endure at this house.

"Now look here," Jim began when they were through with dinner, "I've a
big pile of wood out there in the yard, an' I want ye to tote it into
the wood-house an' pile it up. I'll show ye where to put it. I'm
gittin' mighty little fer yer keep, an' I expect ye to git a hustle on
to help pay fer yer grub an' washin'."

"Don't be too hard on him, Jim," M