ys of knowledge were thorny and difficult. Reaching the master's
desk and the ministering presence above it, he stopped awkwardly, and
with the rim of his soft felt hat endeavored to wipe from his face the
meek smile it had worn when he entered. It chanced also that he had
halted before the minute stool of the infant Filgee, and his large
figure instantly assumed such Brobdingnagian proportions in contrast
that he became more embarrassed than ever. The master made no attempt to
relieve him, but regarded him with cold interrogation.

"I reckoned," he began, leaning one hand on the master's desk with
affected ease, as he dusted his leg with his hat with the other, "I
reckoned--that is--I allowed--I orter say--that I'd find ye alone at
this time. Ye gin'rally are, ye know. It's a nice, soothin', restful,
stoodious time, when a man kin, so to speak, run back on his eddication
and think of all he ever knowed. Ye're jist like me, and ye see I sorter
spotted your ways to onct."

"Then why did you come here this morning and disturb the school?"
demanded the master sharply.

"That's so, I sorter slipped up thar, didn't I?" said Uncle Ben with
a smile of rueful assent. "You see I didn't allow to COME IN then, but
on'y to hang round a leetle and kinder get used to it, and it to me."

"Used to what?" said the master impatiently, albeit with a slight
softening at his intruder's penitent expression.

Uncle Ben did not reply immediately, but looked around as if for a seat,
tried one or two benches and a desk with his large hand as if testing
their security, and finally abandoning the idea as dangerous, seated
himself on the raised platform beside the master's chair, having
previously dusted it with the flap of his hat. Finding, however, that
the attitude was not conducive to explanation, he presently rose again,
and picking up one of the school-books from the master's desk eyed it
unskilfully upside down, and then said hesitatingly,--

"I reckon ye ain't usin' Dobell's 'Rithmetic here?"

"No," said the master.

"That's bad. 'Pears to be played out--that Dobell feller. I was brought
up on Dobell. And Parsings' Grammar? Ye don't seem to be a using
Parsings' Grammar either?"

"No," said the master, relenting still more as he glanced at Uncle Ben's
perplexed face with a faint smile.

"And I reckon you'd be saying the same of Jones' 'Stronomy and Algebry?
Things hev changed. You've got all the new style here," he continued,
wit