n he heard voices--loud, coarse
voices--_coming from his shanty_. He crawled up close. The door
was open. There in his dear cabin were three tramps playing cards and
drinking out of a bottle. On the ground beside them were his shell
necklaces broken up to furnish poker chips. In a smouldering fire
outside were the remains of his bow and arrows.

Poor Yan! His determination to be like an Indian under torture
had sustained him in the teacher's cruel beating and in his home
punishments, but this was too much. He fled to a far and quiet corner
and there flung himself down and sobbed in grief and rage--he would
have killed them if he could. After an hour or two he came trembling
back to see the tramps finish their game and their liquor; then they
defiled the shanty and left it in ruins.

The brightest thing in his life was gone--a King discrowned,
dethroned. Feeling now every wale on his back and legs, he sullenly
went home.

This was late in the summer. Autumn followed last, with shortening
days and chilly winds. Yan had no chance to see his glen, even had he
greatly wished it. He became more studious; books were his pleasure
now. He worked harder than ever, winning honour at school, but
attracting no notice at the home, where piety reigned.

The teachers and some of the boys remarked that Yan was getting very
thin and pale. Never very robust, he now looked like an invalid; but
at home no note was taken of the change. His mother's thoughts were
all concentrated on his scapegrace younger brother. For two years she
had rarely spoken to Yan peaceably. There was a hungry place in
his heart as he left the house unnoticed each morning and saw his
graceless brother kissed and darlinged. At school their positions
were reversed. Yan was the principal's pride. He had drawn no more
caricatures, and the teacher flattered himself that that beating was
what had saved the pale-faced head boy.

He grew thinner and heart-hungrier till near Christmas, when the
breakdown came.

* * * * *

"He is far gone in consumption," said the physician. "He cannot live
over a month or two"

[Illustration: "There in his dear cabin were three tramps"]

"He _must_ live," sobbed the conscience-stricken mother. "He must
live--O God, he must live."

All that suddenly awakened mother's love could do was done. The
skilful physician did his best, but it was the mother that saved him.
She watched over him night and day;