attended to. I knew the river well; I knew what points of land would be
overflowed in the June rise; I knew how far the backwater would reach up
the creek; I knew the least obstructed paths through the woods; I could
even tell where the most available timber was to be found. I felt, too,
that my knowledge was appreciated. George Hammond had that one best gift
that belongs to all successful leaders, whether of armies, colonies, or
bands of miners: he recognized merit when he saw it. From that morning a
feeling of self-respect dawned upon me, I was not so altogether ignorant
as I had thought myself, I had some available knowledge; and with that
feeling came the determination to raise myself out of that slough of
despond into which I had fallen the night before.

From that time a sort of friendship sprang up between George Hammond and
myself. Every morning I rowed him across the river, and, in the early
morning light, before the workmen were out of bed, he talked over,
partly to himself and partly to me, his plans for the day and his
vexations of the day before, until I began to offer advice and make
suggestions, which made him laughingly call me his little counsellor.

Then in the evenings (he slept at my father's) he would pick up my books
and amuse himself with talking to me about them, laugh at my crude
enthusiasms, clear up some difficult passage, prune away remorselessly
the trash that had crept into my little collection, until, one day,
returning from Cincinnati, where business had called him, he brought
with him a store of books inexhaustible to my inexperienced eyes, and
declared himself my teacher for the winter.

"Never mind Janet's knitting and mending, Mrs. Boarders," said he, in
reply to my mother's complaints; "she is a smart girl, and may be a
school-mistress yet, and earn more money than any woman on Sandy."

"But I am afraid," my step-mother answered, "that the books she reads
are not godly, and have no grace in them. They look to me like players'
trash. I've tried to do my duty to Janet," she continued, plaintively;
"but I hope the Lord won't hold me accountable for her headstrong ways."

Meantime, as I read in one of my books, and repeated to myself over and
over again in my fulness of content,--

"How happily the days
Of Thalaba went by!"

How rapidly fled that winter, and how soon came the spring, that would
bring me, I thought, new hopes, new interests, new companions!

How changed a sc