a selfish one, and thus turn to gall all
the affection with which they are endowed. Miss Nancy Sawyer had been
Ralph's Sunday-school teacher, and it was precious little, so far as
information went, that he learned from her; for she never could conceive
of Jerusalem as a place in any essential regard very different from
Lewisburg, where she had spent her life. But Ralph learned from her what
most Sunday-school teachers fail to teach, the great lesson of
Christianity, by the side of which all antiquities and geographies and
chronologies and exegetics and other niceties are as nothing.

And now he turned the head of the roan toward the cottage of Miss Nancy
Sawyer as naturally as the roan would have gone to his own stall in the
stable at home. The snow had gradually ceased to fall, and was eddying
round the house, when Ralph dismounted from his foaming horse, and,
carrying the still form of Shocky as reverently as though it had been
something heavenly, knocked at Miss Nancy Sawyer's door.

With natural feminine instinct that lady started back when she saw
Hartsook, for she had just built a fire in the stove, and she now stood
at the door with unwashed face and uncombed hair.

"Why, Ralph Hartsook, where did you drop down from--and what have you
got?"

"I came from Flat Creek this morning, and I brought you a little angel
who has got out of heaven, and needs some of your motherly care."

Shocky was brought in. The chill shook him now by fits only, for a fever
had spotted his cheeks already.

"Who are you?" said Miss Nancy, as she unwrapped him.

"I'm Shocky, a little boy as God forgot, and then thought of again."

CHAPTER XXII.

PANCAKES.

Half an hour later, Ralph, having seen Miss Nancy Sawyer's machinery of
warm baths and simple remedies safely in operation, and having seen the
roan colt comfortably stabled, and rewarded for his faithfulness by a
bountiful supply of the best hay and the promise of oats when he was
cool--half an hour later Ralph was doing the most ample, satisfactory,
and amazing justice to his Aunt Matilda's hot buckwheat-cakes and warm
coffee. And after his life in Flat Creek, Aunt Matilda's house did look
like paradise. How white the table-cloth, how bright the coffee-pot, how
clean the wood-work, how glistening the brass door-knobs, how spotless
everything that came under the sovereign sway of Mrs. Matilda White! For
in every Indiana village as large as Lewisburg, there are general