some barefooted
little girl to be endowed with Sunday-school books.

"No," he answered, reflectively, "I don't think there can be much.
There's been a good deal of cold weather this winter, and you know how
metal shrinks! No-o-o, I'm sure there can't be only a little."

"Well, Johnny, you go up and bring down your bank. We'll see. Perhaps
Charles may be right, after all; and it's not worth while to save
money. I don't want a son of mine to get into a bad habit unless it
pays."

So Johnny travelled reluctantly up to his garret, and went to the
corner where his big tin bank-box had sat on a chest undisturbed for
years. He had long ago fortified himself against temptation by vowing
never to even shake it; for he remembered that formerly when Charles
used to shake his, and rattle the coins inside, he always ended by
smashing in the roof. Johnny approached his bank, and taking hold of
the cornice on either side, braced himself, gave a strong lift
upwards, and keeled over upon his back with the edifice atop of him,
like one of the figures in a picture of the great Lisbon earthquake!
There was but a single coin in it; and that, by an ingenious device,
was suspended in the centre, so that every piece popped in at the
chimney would clink upon it in passing through Charlie's little hole
into Charlie's little stocking hanging innocently beneath.

Of course restitution was out of the question; and even Johnny felt
that any merely temporal punishment would be weakly inadequate to the
demands of justice. But that night, in the dead silence of his
chamber, Johnny registered a great and solemn swear that so soon as he
could worry together a little capital, he would fling his feeble
remaining energies into the spendthrift business. And he did so.

* * * * *

FOUR JACKS AND A KNAVE.

In the "backwoods" of Pennsylvania stood a little mill. The miller
appertaining unto this mill was a Pennsylvania Dutchman--a species of
animal in which for some centuries _sauerkraut_ has been usurping the
place of sense. In Hans Donnerspiel the usurpation was not complete;
he still knew enough to go in when it rained, but he did not know
enough to stay there after the storm had blown over. Hans was known to
a large circle of friends and admirers as about the worst miller in
those parts; but as he was the only one, people who quarrelled with an
exclusively meat diet continued to patronize him. He was honest, as