oing ahead all
the time."

"That is what teacher says."

"What do you do in the club?"

"We had a grand march yesterday, and we have a pammerrammer next
Saturday."

"All the boys in your club go to Sunday-school?"

"All except Tony."

"Who is Tony?"

"He's an Italian boy, and his father is away off."

"Couldn't you get him into your class?"

"I might try."

"I will make the club an offer. If they will get five boys into school and
keep them there two months, I will give them a banner."

Charlie was delighted and promised to tell the boys in the club.

Mr. Walton here left Charlie and Aunt Stanshy, and went to his home. Aunt
Stanshy greatly reverenced any one who led the worship of the congregation
in the old church and encompassed such with a dignity-fence that was about
as high as the famous steeple of old St. John's, and that was a landmark
for souls at sea.

Then there was a family mystery about Mr. Walton that fascinated Aunt
Stanshy. He lived with his old white-haired mother, and there were hints
and whispers that the two mourned over a once wayward and now absent
member of the family. It leaked out that this was a son younger than Mr.
Walton, and he had married a beautiful foreign lady whom the clergyman
loved also, but had relinquished to the younger brother. This younger son
was off somewhere on the sea, it was whispered; but he had a child ashore.
On stormy days, it was noticed that the white-haired mother would watch
the steeple, which consisted of a series of diminutive houses rising one
above the other, as if ambitious to fly, but finally relinquishing the
task into the hands or wings rather of a gilded weather-cock. The mother
would watch the pigeons flying into their hiding-places in the steeple,
seeking a refuge from the wild storm, and then her eyes would be lifted
higher to the weather-vane, as if seeking for news about the sea-wind.
Still higher went her thoughts--to God.

"She's thinking of _him_, that son," said the observant neighbors, who
never knowingly gave up a chance to see something. To Aunt Stanshy this
bit of mystery only made Mr. Walton all the more interesting.

Mr. Walton thought the next day he would fish for scholars in the Grimes
neighborhood, where Tony lived. Billy and Rick, or "the governor," as the
club boys more generally called him now, lived in a long, low-roofed
building that had two green doors. One door led into the home where lived
Simes Badger when off d