at him.

"'I don't follow you in the least,' I said. He laughed.

"'Of course you didn't know that Wurtzi was one of the boys in my
school,' he replied, 'and more than that, he is the poorest boy in the
school. He lives about three miles out of the village, and the only way
in which he could secure his father's permission to allow him to come to
school was that he should turn over to him the trifling sum we pay for
janitor work.'"

"Pretty good stuff in the boy to want to learn under those conditions,"
commented Hamilton.

"He wanted to educate himself, and his mother was very ambitious. She is
Polish, evidently of the better class--and, as you know, the Poles are
one of the most intellectual races of the world--and the boy gets his
brains from her. The school-master told me that two years ago the boy
could neither read nor write his own name, and yet, within that time he
had learned to rival his teacher in a fair contest! And during those two
years he had been walking barefoot three miles to school, getting there
by daybreak, making the fire, sweeping the floor, cleaning the windows,
and then settling down to prepare his morning lessons before the opening
of school.

"I told Sinclair," the supervisor continued, "that I thought he ought to
be ten times prouder of the success of his pupil than of the merits of
an examination paper, because it took a higher degree of ability to
teach well than merely to answer a set of test questions, and the boy
must have been wonderfully well taught to achieve so much. He agreed
with me, of course, but I could see that it irked him a little just the
same. He volunteered, however, to assist his pupil as much as he could."

"That was very decent of him, I think," Hamilton said, "lots of men
would have borne a grudge. But did you say his name was Sinclair?"

"Yes," the supervisor answered, "Gregory Sinclair. Why?"

"And you said he had been in the mountains?"

"Quite a good deal."

"Then that must be Bill Wilsh's teacher," exclaimed Hamilton, and he
told the supervisor the story of the "cunjer," the whittled schoolhouse
and the "trying" scholar. "I've got the carving still," he concluded,
"and as you probably will see Mr. Sinclair again soon, I wonder if you
would give it to him for me. Don't forget to tell him that the door was
made to appear open, to show him that he was expected back."

"Of course, I shall be glad to give it to him," the supervisor answered,
"and from what