ght, Seven, and Six. Peter took
the bowl, and looked at his children.

The earlier numbers were observing him with peculiar sympathy, putting
themselves in his place, as it were, possessing the bowl in
imagination; the others now moved their spoons absent-mindedly around
in the pot, brought them empty to their mouths, mechanically, now and
again, sucked them more or less, and still stared steadily at their
father.

His inner walls felt glued together, yet indescribably hollow; the
smell of the mush went up into his nostrils, and pungently provoked
his palate and throat. He was famishing.

"Troth, then, Mary Ann," he said, "there's no hunger in me to-night.
Sure, I wish the childer wouldn't leave me the trouble of eating it.
Come, then, all of ye!"

The nine came promptly to his call. There were just twenty-two large
spoonfuls in the bowl; each child received two; the remaining four
went to the four youngest. Then the bowl was skilfully scraped by
Number Nine, after which Number Seven took it, whirled a cup of water
artfully round its interior, and with this put a fine finish on his
meal.

Peter McGrath then searched thoughtfully in his trousers pockets,
turning their corners up, getting pinches of tobacco dust out of their
remotest recesses; he put his blouse pocket through a similar process.
He found no pockets in his well-patched overcoat when he took it down,
but he pursued the dust into its lining, and separated it carefully
from little dabs of wool. Then he put the collection into an extremely
old black clay pipe, lifted a coal in with his fingers, and took his
supper.

It would be absurd to assert that, on this continent, a strong man
could be so poor as Peter, unless he had done something very wrong or
very foolish. Peter McGrath was, in truth, out of work because he had
committed an outrage on economics. He had been guilty of the enormous
error of misunderstanding, and trying to set at naught in his own
person, the immutable law of supply and demand.

Fancying that a first-class hewer in a timber shanty had an
inalienable right to receive at least thirty dollars a month, when the
demand was only strong enough to yield him twenty-two dollars a month,
Peter had refused to engage at the beginning of the winter.

"Now, Mr. McGrath, you're making a mistake," said his usual employer,
old John Pontiac. "I'm offering you the best wages going, mind that.
There's mighty little squared timber coming out this win