w richer by refusing to give," returned Mother Lemon, and
she tucked the penny inside Gabriel's blouse and turned him out the door
with her blessing; so that, being a peaceable boy of few words, he objected
no longer, but moved along the road toward home, for it was nearly dinner
time.

He found his stepmother setting the table, and his father busily
calculating with figures on a bit of paper.

"Get the water, Gabriel, and be quick now," was his welcome from the
sorry-faced woman.

When he had done all she directed him, there was still a little time, for
William and Henry had not come in from the field. Gabriel sat down near his
father and, noting a rusty, dusty little book lying on the table, he picked
it up.

"What is this, father?" he asked, for there were few books in that house.

The man looked up from his figuring and sneered. "It is called by some the
Book of Life," he said. "As a matter of fact it would not bring two
shillings."

So saying he returned to his pleasant calculations and Gabriel idly opened
the book. His gaze widened, for the verse on which his eyes fell stood out
from the others in tiny letters of flame.

"_The love of money is the root of all evil_," he read.

"Father, father," he exclaimed, "what wonder is this? Look!" The miser
turned, impatient of a second interruption. "See the letters of fire!"

"I see nothing. You grow stupider every day, Gabriel."

"But the letters burn, father," and then the boy read aloud the sentence
which for him stood out so vividly on the page.

They had a surprising effect upon his listener. The miser grew pale and
then red with anger. He rose and, standing over the boy, frowned furiously.
"I'll teach you to reprove your father," he cried. "Get out of my house. No
dinner for you to-day."

The stepmother had heard what Gabriel read, and well she knew the truth of
those words.

As the astonished boy gathered himself up and moved out the door, she went
after him, calling in pretended sharpness; but when he came near, she
whispered, "Come to the back of the shed in five minutes," and when Gabriel
obeyed, later, he found there a thick piece of bread and a lump of cheese.

These he took, hungrily, and ate them in the forest before returning to
school. He had never felt so kindly toward school as this afternoon. Were
it not for what he learned there, he could not have read the words in the
Book of Life; and although they had brought him into trouble, he woul