keep his word, and much against his will James set about
earning money in his spare hours, lest the wood-box should get empty.
He did all sorts of things, ran errands, took care of a neighbor's cow,
helped the old sexton dust and warm the church on Sundays, and in these
ways got enough to buy fuel in small quantities. But it was hard work;
the days were short, the winter was bitterly cold, and precious time
went fast, and the dear books were so fascinating, that it was sad to
leave them, for dull duties that never seemed done.

"The minister watched him quietly, and seeing that he was in earnest
helped him without his knowledge. He met him often driving the wood
sleds from the forest, where the men were chopping and as James plodded
beside the slow oxen, he read or studied, anxious to use every minute.
'The boy is worth helping, this lesson will do him good, and when he
has learned it, I will give him an easier one,' said the minister
to himself, and on Christmas eve a splendid load of wood was quietly
dropped at the door of the little house, with a new saw and a bit of
paper, saying only,

"'The Lord helps those who help themselves.'

"Poor James expected nothing, but when he woke on that cold Christmas
morning, he found a pair of warm mittens, knit by his mother, with her
stiff painful fingers. This gift pleased him very much, but her kiss
and tender look as she called him her 'good son,' was better still. In
trying to keep her warm, he had warmed his own heart, you see, and
in filling the wood-box he had also filled those months with duties
faithfully done. He began to see this, to feel that there was something
better than books, and to try to learn the lessons God set him, as well
as those his school-master gave.

"When he saw the great pile of oak and pine logs at his door, and read
the little paper, he knew who sent it, and understood the minister's
plan; thanked him for it, and fell to work with all his might. Other
boys frolicked that day, but James sawed wood, and I think of all
the lads in the town the happiest was the one in the new mittens, who
whistled like a blackbird as he filled his mother's wood-box."

"That's a first rater!" cried Dan, who enjoyed a simple matter-of-face
story better than the finest fairy tale; "I like that fellow after all."

"I could saw wood for you, Aunt Jo!" said Demi, feeling as if a new
means of earning money for his mother was suggested by the story.

"Tell about a bad