shing the wheelbarrow loaded
with sacks of nuts, he added:

"At last Grimshaw has found somethin' that he can't buy an' he's awful
surprised. Too bad he didn't learn that lesson long ago."

He stopped his wheelbarrow by the steps and we sat down together on the
edge of the stoop as he added:

"I got mad--they kep' pickin' on me so--I'm sorry, but I couldn't help
it. We'll start up ag'in somewheres if we have to. There's a good many
days' work in me yet."

As we carried the bags to the attic room I thought of the lodestone and
the compass and knew that Mr. Wright had foreseen what was likely to
happen. When we came down Uncle Peabody said to me:

"Do you remember what you read out of a book one night about a man
sellin' his honor?"

"Yes," I answered. "It's one o' the books that Mr. Wright gave us."

"It's somethin' purty common sense," he remarked, "an' we stopped and
talked it over. I wish you'd git the book an' read it now."

I found the book and read aloud the following passage:

"Honor is a strange commodity. It can not be divided and sold in
part. All or none is the rule of the market. While it can be sold
in a way, it can not be truly bought. It vanishes in the transfer
of its title and is no more. Who seeks to buy it gains only loss.
It is the one thing which distinguishes manhood from property. Who
sells his honor sells his manhood and becomes simply a thing of
meat and blood and bones--a thing to be watched and driven and
cudgelled like the ox--for he has sold that he can not buy, not if
all the riches in the world were his."

A little silence followed the words. Then Uncle Peabody said:

"That's the kind o' stuff in our granary. We've been reapin' it out o'
the books Mr. Grimshaw scolded about, a little here an' a little there
for years, an' we knew it was good wheat. If he had books like that in
his house mebbe Amos would 'a' been different. An' he'd 'a' been
different. He wouldn't 'a' had to come here tryin' to buy our honor like
you'd buy a hoss."

"Oh, dear!" Aunt Deel exclaimed wearily, with her hands over her eyes;
"a boy has to have somethin' besides pigs an' cattle an' threats an'
stones an' hoss dung an' cow manure to take up his mind."

Uncle Peabody voiced my own feeling when he said:

"I feel sorry, awful sorry, for that boy."

We spent a silent afternoon gathering apples. After supper we played Old
Sledge and my uncle had hard work to