e think him silly."

Now if any of my child readers want to know what a genius is--shall
I try to tell them, or shall I not? I will give them one very short
answer: it means one who understands things without any other body
telling him what they mean. God makes a few such now and then to teach
the rest of us.

"Do you like riddles?" asked Mr. Raymond, turning over the leaves of his
own book.

"I don't know what a riddle is," said Diamond.

"It's something that means something else, and you've got to find out
what the something else is."

Mr. Raymond liked the old-fashioned riddle best, and had written a
few--one of which he now read.

I have only one foot, but thousands of toes;
My one foot stands, but never goes.
I have many arms, and they're mighty all;
And hundreds of fingers, large and small.
From the ends of my fingers my beauty grows.
I breathe with my hair, and I drink with my toes.
I grow bigger and bigger about the waist,
And yet I am always very tight laced.
None e'er saw me eat--I've no mouth to bite;
Yet I eat all day in the full sunlight.
In the summer with song I shave and quiver,
But in winter I fast and groan and shiver.

"Do you know what that means, Diamond?" he asked, when he had finished.

"No, indeed, I don't," answered Diamond.

"Then you can read it for yourself, and think over it, and see if you
can find out," said Mr. Raymond, giving him the book. "And now you had
better go home to your mother. When you've found the riddle, you can
come again."

If Diamond had had to find out the riddle in order to see Mr. Raymond
again, I doubt if he would ever have seen him.

"Oh then," I think I hear some little reader say, "he could not have
been a genius, for a genius finds out things without being told."

I answer, "Genius finds out truths, not tricks." And if you do not
understand that, I am afraid you must be content to wait till you grow
older and know more.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE EARLY BIRD

WHEN Diamond got home he found his father at home already, sitting by
the fire and looking rather miserable, for his head ached and he felt
sick. He had been doing night work of late, and it had not agreed with
him, so he had given it up, but not in time, for he had taken some
kind of fever. The next day he was forced to keep his bed, and his wife