lin' quick at figgers!"

Leander, still silent and listening, flushed slightly. This measured
praise was an offence to him; but he looked up brightly and obediently
when his uncle wagged an uncouthly sportive head (Nehe-miah's anatomy
lent itself to the gay and graceful with much reluctance), thrust
his hands into his pockets, and, tilting himself back in his chair,
continued:

"I'll try ye, sonny--I'll try ye. How much air nine times seven?--nine
times seven?"

"Forty-two!" replied the boy, with a bright, docile countenance fixed
upon his relative.

There was a pause. "Right!" exclaimed Nehe-miah, to the relief of
Sudley and his wife, who had trembled during the pause, for it seemed so
threatening. They smiled at each other, unconscious that the examination
meant aught more serious than a display of their prodigy's learning.

"An', now, how much air twelve times eight?" demanded Nehemiah.

"Sixty-six!" came the answer, quick as lightning.

"Right, sir, every time!" cried Nehemiah with a glow of genuine
exultation, as he brought down the fore-legs of the chair to the floor,
and the two Sudleys laughed aloud with pleasure.

Leander saw them all distorted and grimacing while the room swam round.
The scheme was clear enough to him now. The illiterate Nehemiah, whose
worldly prosperity had outstripped his mental qualifications, had
bethought himself of filling the breach with his nephew, given away
as surplusage in his burdensome infancy, but transformed into a unique
utility under the tutelage of Abner Sage. It was his boasting of his
froward pupil, doubtless, that had suggested the idea, and Leander
understood now that he was to do the work of the store and the
post-office under the nominal incumbency of this unlettered lout. Had
the whole transaction been open and acknowledged, Leander would have had
scant appetite for the work under this master; but he revolted at the
flimsy, contemptible sham; he bitterly resented the innuendoes against
the piety of the Sudleys, not that he cared for piety, save in
the abstract; he was daunted by the brutal ignorance, the doltish
inefficiency of the imposture that had so readily accepted his patently
false answers to the simple questions. He had a sort of crude reverence
for education, and it had seemed to him a very serious matter to take
such liberties with the multiplication table. He valued, too, with a
boy's stalwart vanity, his reputation for great learning, and he would