KES A NEW FRIEND

Harry was not entirely satisfied with what he had done. He regretted
the necessity which had compelled him to take George Leman's horse. It
looked too much like stealing; and his awakened moral sense repelled
the idea of such a crime. But they could not accuse him of stealing
the horse; for his last act would repudiate the idea.

His great resolution to become a good and true man was by no means
forgotten. It is true, at the very outset of the new life he had
marked out for himself, he had been obliged to behave like a young
ruffian, or be restored to his exacting guardians. It was rather a bad
beginning; but he had taken what had appeared to him the only course.

Was it right for him to run away? On the solution of this problem
depended the moral character of the subsequent acts. If it was right
for him to run away, why, of course it was right for him to resist
those who attempted to restore him to Jacob Wire.

Harry made up his mind that it was right for him to run away, under
the circumstances. His new master had been charged to break him
down--even to starve him down. Jacob's reputation as a mean and hard
man was well merited; and it was his duty to leave without stopping to
say good by.

I do not think that Harry was wholly in the right, though I dare say
all my young readers will sympathize with the stout-hearted little
hero. So far, Jacob Wire had done him no harm. He had suffered no
hardship at his hands. All his misery was in the future; and if he had
stayed, perhaps his master might have done well by him, though it is
not probable. Still, I think Harry was in some sense justifiable. To
remain in such a place was to cramp his soul, as well as pinch his
body--to be unhappy, if not positively miserable. He might have tried
the place, and when he found it could not be endured, fled from it.

It must be remembered that Harry was a pauper and an orphan. He had
not had the benefit of parental instruction. It was not from the home
of those whom God had appointed to be his guardians and protectors
that he had fled; it was from one who regarded him, not as a rational
being, possessed of an immortal soul--one for whose moral, mental, and
spiritual welfare he was accountable before God--that he had run away,
but from one who considered him as a mere machine, from which it was
his only interest to get as much work at as little cost as possible.
He fled from a taskmaster, not from one who was in an