and stop himself and look
at him soberly, with nothing of curiosity, but with indignant and
sorrowful reflection. At these times poor Mindy, if he had only known
it, drove his old master, who had illumined his darkness of mind with
one cruel flash of fear, out of house and home, and sat in his stead
by his fireside in warmth and comfort.

Jerome left school finally when he was seventeen; up to that time he
attended all the winter sessions. During the winter, when Jerome was
seventeen, a man came to the neighboring town of Dale, bought out the
old shoe-factory and store there, and set up business on a more
extensive scale, sending out work in large quantities. Many of the
older boys left school on that account, Jerome among them; he had
special inducements to do so, through his uncle Ozias Lamb.

"That man that bought out Bill Dickey, over in Dale, has been talkin'
to me," Lamb told Jerome one evening. "Seems he's goin' to increase
the business; he's laid in an extra lot of stock, and hired two more
cutters, and he says he don't want to fool with so many small
accounts, and he'd rather let some of it out in big lots. Says, if
I'm willin', I can take as much as I can manage, and let it out
myself for bindin' and closin', and he'll pay me considerable more on
a lot than Robinson has, cash down. Now you see, J'rome, I'm gettin'
older, and I can't do much more finishin' than I've been doin' right
along. What I'm comin' at is this: s'pose I set another bench in
here, and take the extra work, and you quit school and go into
business. I can learn you all I know fast enough. You can nigh about
make a shoe now--dun'no' but you can quite."

"I'd have to leave school," Jerome said, soberly.

"How much more book-learnin' do you think you need?" returned Ozias,
with his hard laugh. "Don't you forget that all you came into this
world for was to try not to get out of it through lack of
nourishment, and to labor for life with the sweat of your brow. You
don't need much eddication for that. It ain't with you as it was with
Lawrence Prescott, who was too good to go to the district school, and
had to be sent to Boston to have a minister fit him for college. You
don't come of a liberal eddicated race. You've got to work for the
breath of your nostrils, and not for the breath of your mind or your
soul. You'll find you can't fight your lot in life, J'rome Edwards;
you ain't got standin' room enough outside it."

"I don't want to fight m