ing off.

He was not quick enough. Wade knocked him down flat on a heap of
moulding-sand. The hat in mourning for Poole found its place in a puddle.

Bill did not like the new Emperor's method of compelling _kotou_. Round
One of the mill had not given him enough.

He jumped up from his soft bed and made a vicious rush at Wade. But he was
damaged by evil courses. He was fighting against law and order, on the
side of wrong and bad manners.

The same fist met him again, and heavier.

Up went his heels! Down went his head! It struck the ragged edge of a
fresh casting, and there he lay stunned and bleeding on his hard black
pillow.

"Ring the bell to go to work!" said Wade, in a tone that made the ringer
jump. "Now, men, take hold and do your duty and everything will go
smooth!"

The bell clanged in. The line looked at its prostrate champion, then at
the new boss standing there, cool and brave, and not afraid of a regiment
of sledge-hammers.

They wanted an Executive. They wanted to be well governed, as all men do.
They wanted disorder out and order in. The new man looked like a man,
talked fair, hit hard. Why not all hands give in with a good grace and go
to work like honest fellows?

The line broke up. The hands went off to their duty. And there was never
any more insubordination at Dunderbunk.

This was June.

Skates in the next chapter.

Love in good time afterward shall glide upon the scene.

CHAPTER IV.

A CHRISTMAS GIFT.

The pioneer sunbeam of next Christmas morning rattled over the Dunderbunk
hills, flashed into Richard Wade's eyes, waked him, and was off,
ricochetting across the black ice of the river.

Wade jumped up, electrified and jubilant. He had gone to bed, feeling
quite too despondent for so healthy a fellow. Christmas Eve, the time of
family-meetings, reminded him how lonely he was. He had not a relative in
the world, except two little nieces,--one as tall as his knee, the other
almost up to his waist; and them he had safely bestowed in a nook of New
England, to gain wit and virtues as they gained inches.

"I have had a stern and lonely life," thought Wade, as he blew out his
candle last night, "and what has it profited me?"

Perhaps the pioneer sunbeam answered this question with a truism, not
always as applicable as in this case,--"A brave, able, self-respecting
manhood is fair profit for any man's first thirty years of life."

But, answered or not, the question troubled