r 14.]

WHO WAS PAUL GRAYSON?

BY JOHN HABBERTON,

AUTHOR OF "HELEN'S BABIES."

CHAPTER III.

MUSIC AND MANNERS.

The boys at Mr. Morton's select school were not the only people in
Laketon who were curious about Paul Grayson. Although the men and women
had daily duties like those of men and women elsewhere, they found a
great deal of time in which to think and talk about other people and
their affairs. So all the boys who attended the school were interrogated
so often about their new comrade, that they finally came to consider
themselves as being in some way a part of the mystery.

Mr. Morton, who had opened his school only several weeks before the
appearance of Grayson, was himself unknown at Laketon until that spring,
when, after an unsuccessful attempt to be made principal of the grammar
school, he had hired the upper floor of what once had been a store
building, and opened a school on his own account. He had introduced
himself by letters that the school trustees, and Mr. Merivale, pastor of
one of the village churches, considered very good; but now that
Grayson's appearance was explained only by the teacher's statement that
the boy was son of an old school friend who now was a widower, some of
the trustees wished they were able to remember the names and addresses
appended to the letters that the new teacher had presented. Sam
Wardwell's father having learned from Mr. Morton where last he had
taught, went so far as to write to the wholesale merchants with whom he
dealt, in New York, for the name of some customer in Mr. Morton's former
town; but even by making the most of this roundabout method of inquiry
he only learned that the teacher had been highly respected, although
nothing was known of his antecedents.

With one of the town theories on the subject of Mr. Morton and Paul
Grayson the boys entirely disagreed: this was that the teacher and the
boy were father and son.

"I don't think grown people are so very smart, after all," said Sam
Wardwell, one day, as the boys who were not playing lounged in the shade
of the school building and chatted. "They talk about Grayson being Mr.
Morton's son. Why, who ever saw Grayson look a bit afraid of the
teacher?"

"Nobody," replied Ned Johnston, and no one contradicted him, although
Bert Sharp suggested that there were other boys in the world who were
not afraid of their fathers--himself, for instance.

"Then you ought to be," said Benny Mallow. Benny looked o