as exact and
persevering.

At work early and late, he seemed the model of contentment, as he was of
industry. Prompt, obliging, careful, he made the future easy of
prediction.

But though the ruddy firelight shines well on the window panes, what
griefs, what agonies, what discords, are developed around the
hearthstone. Scheffer's quiet demeanor was, in some degree, deception.
One woman in the world knew it was so--no other being did.

The immediate excitant of his unrest was found in the college students,
who passed his place of business at all hours of the day. He remembered
that he might have worked his way into the ranks of those fellows.
Nothing vexed him so much as to see a lounger among them; for he must
needs think of the time when, a stripling, he agonized over his choice,
and said to himself, thinking of his mother (dead now, when the comfort
he toiled for was secured), 'Time enough for books when I am sure of
bread; flesh is needy and perishing, spirit is eternal.' He had walked
out of school to the counter of his uncle, and stood behind it seven
years, doing with earnest might what his hand found to do.

And here he was now, on his own ground, wistfully looking over his
barriers into the college yard, and, shall we say it, envying the
career of every studious lad--most of all that of the scholarly Harry
Cromwell, and the broad-browed, proud young Mitchell, who came into his
shop now and then, in remembrance of old days; for these lads could all
remember when they stood in one straight line among the social forces,
and neither had marched out of the old division to take rank in the new.

One day Paul Mitchell strolled into Scheffer's shop. Scheffer, at the
moment, was reading a newspaper, and he did not instantly throw the
sheet aside: he thought it unlikely that Paul required his service. But
at last, laying the paper away, and going up to Mitchell, he asked:

'What will you have, this morning?'

Paul's bright eyes smiled, full of fun.

'I'll have fifty thousand dollars, straight, and a library like that in
the Atheneum.'

'You want shoeing more,' was Scheffer's dry response; and, turning from
the youth, he went back to his counter, and emptied thereon a large box
of patent leathers, which he began to assort.

Gradually Paul approached, and at last he took up a pair of the boots,
and asked the price. Scheffer named it; Paul threw them down again.

'You might as well ask fifty dollars as three. It