inion of him. It isn't from Scheffer I
heard it. You don't want to know what a noble fellow he is;' and he
wound up with August's frequent saying, 'it makes no difference.'

'I want to hear what you are going to do with this box, though,' said
Mrs. Mitchell. 'There's not a room in the house big enough to hold it.'

Paul plead for a corner of his own room; a startling proposal, indeed,
for those who heard it, the 'room' being hardly an apology for a closet.
He pleads well, however, for he carried the point, and space was in some
way provided; and Mrs. Mitchell, who had hopes of a future for her
children that should throw a glory round their unfolding and her closing
years, heard the boy say, with, some sort of faith: 'Oh, mother, you
don't know yet what a genius you've got in your boy;' and when she left
him he was still laughing over the boast. But Josephine saw that as he
stooped over the chest there were tears in his eyes.

For that reason she did not leave him to rejoice alone over his
treasure. And for the reason that she did not leave him, he said to her,
observing with what interest she took up one bright tool after another
from its place:

'Scheffer has bought this box for me. You see, don't you, the tools were
never used before? Not one of them.'

'Yes,' said Josephine, 'that's easy to be seen.'

'I must keep them and use them, I suppose!'

'You intend to do it, Paul. Are you trying to deceive me? Do you suppose
I don't know that of course he had a reason for sending them to you!
People are not in the habit of sending such things to boys who don't
know how to use them.'

'But, Josephine, I shall pay him for them.'

'Yes, or else I shall, Paul. But let him enjoy the gift; for I know how
it pleased him to send it.'

'And I won't serve him as another fellow did, too proud to accept a
favor of him till he should get beyond sight and sound, so stingy of his
thanks. That's what your Cromwell did! I hate the hateful fellow.'

'My Cromwell? Did he that?' But Josephine neither swooned, nor cried,
nor blushed; was not overwhelmed with shame, nor indignation, nor
distress. Some such exhibition, that should be as a confession, Paul had
looked for, trembling, when the daring deed was done, of exposing a
lover's baseness to the woman he loved.

'Yes,' said Paul, cooled somewhat by his sister's calmness. 'I knew I
ought to let you know. But I thought I never could. He wouldn't take the
money August offered him, b