kind." And again he laughed at his own wit.

"Step up and try," exclaimed the stranger, impatiently.

I grasped the leg firmly in my hand; the horse made no resistance, and I
began my work.

"Well, seein' as you've made friends with the critter, I'll be the
gainer and take a bit of supper," said my master, after a dogged stare.
"Be sure you put it on strong, Sandy. I don't say as I'll charge any
more, though I'd make a man pay for showin' he'd a spite agin me, let
alone a dumb critter." And taking his hat from a peg, he walked off,
leaving me, with the sparks flying from the forge, busy at the shoe, and
the stranger, with one arm across the neck of the horse, watching me.

Ten minutes of silent work, and, as I loosened my grasp on the leg for a
moment, I met the eye of the gentleman, who, I was conscious, had been
watching me narrowly.

"The horse likes you," he said, pleasantly, here again as though he
shared the feeling.

"Yes," I replied. "Is he in the habit of doing as he did to-night with
strangers?"

"He is fastidious, if you know what that means,--as fond of gentlemen as
his master," he returned, so pleasantly, that, when I looked up,
reddening at the cool assumption of the speech, blacksmith's apprentice
though I was, my eye fell beneath the amused glance of his.

"I'm not a gentleman," I said, after a pause,--a little resentfully, I
fear; "but I'm not a clown, like my master."

"No, that one can see at a glance," he replied. "You may be a gentleman
for aught I see to the contrary; but it requires a great deal to make
one.--What school was that the blacksmith spoke of?"

"It is a village class kept by a young lady who rides over from the
hillside twice a week to teach us poor fellows something. I'm learning
to draw," I added,--the frankness coaxed out of me by a sympathy implied
rather than expressed.

"And you are sorry enough to lose any of this lesson," he said, kindly,
as I put the horse's foot, firmly shod, upon the ground. "There is the
regular pay which goes to the smith, I suppose; and here is a ten-dollar
bill for you, if you have the sense to take it. I don't know what kind
of a youth you may be; but you have a good head and face, and evidently
are superior to the people about you. You don't feel obliged to use
their language or lead their life because you are thrown with them, I
suppose; but neither are you obliged to leave this work because you are
better than the man who calls himself y