"Nothing, sir."

"But you'd never look like that if there weren't. Come, tell me all
about it. What's the trouble?"

The gray eyes of the man regarded the lad kindly.

"I'm--I'm just thinking."

"About what, pray? Something pretty solemn, I'll be bound," persisted
his father.

"Oh, I've a lot of things on my mind," answered Paul hesitatingly.

"Suppose you give me a sample of one of them."

"Just business," replied Paul.

As the words fell with familiar cadence, Mr. Cameron laughed. How often
he had met his wife's troubled inquiries with the same retort.

"Business, eh! And how long is it since the burdens of business have
fallen on your young shoulders?"

"Since yesterday."

"And already you are bowed to the earth with worry?" commented his
father playfully. "Come, son, what's troubling you?"

"The school paper."

"Not going to be able to put it through?"

"Oh, it's not that," said Paul quickly. "We are going to put it through
all right, although at this moment I don't exactly see how. I had no
idea it cost so much to get a paper printed."

"It isn't the actual printing, so much as the typesetting and all that
goes with it, that makes printing an expensive job," explained Mr.
Cameron. "Just now, too, paper and ink cost a great deal, and labor is
high."

"Did people always have to pay so much for paper?"

"People didn't always use to have paper, my son."

Paul opened his eyes.

"What did they print on, then?"

"They didn't have printing presses, either," answered Mr. Cameron. "Long
ago people did not care so much for reading as we do now. Most of them
hadn't education enough to read a book or a paper if they had had one.
In fact, many kings, bishops, and persons of rank could neither read nor
write. Charlemagne could not sign his own name. The era before the
Renaissance was an age of unbelievable ignorance. It is a marvel that
with the turmoil of war and the utter lack of interest in anything
intellectual any learning came out of the period."

"But aren't there very old writings in some of the museums?"

"Yes, we have manuscripts of very ancient date," agreed his father.
"Much of the matter in them however--material such as the Norse Sagas
and the Odes of Horace--were handed down by word of mouth and were not
written until long after they had been chanted or sung. Poets and
minstrels passed on their tales to other bards; had they not done so,
Homer, Ossian, and the Sanscrit Vedas would h