f them?"

"That I don't know, unless it is from the pictures in the good
Doctor's books. I have learned so much from the pictures always. But,
oh! I wish I could make you know some of the delight I felt when first
I could read!"

"I do know it, sweetheart. I, too, craved knowledge and dug it out for
myself, up there in the northern forests, from the few books that came
my way and the rare visit of a man who could teach. The first dollar I
had that was all my own I put aside for you. That was the beginning of
our fortune. The second I invested in a spelling-book. The study,
dear, was all that helped me bear the pain of your death. But you are
not dead! Rather the most alive of any human being whom I ever saw."

"That is true, Gaspar. I _am_ alive. I just quiver with the force that
drives me on from one task to another, from one point reached to one
beyond. And now, with you beside me, there is no limit, it seems, to
the help we can be to every single person who will come within our
reach. Wasn't the woman glad and grateful; and don't you see, laddie,
that it is better as I planned? You say you have been penurious,
saving every cent not expended for your books and necessaries: and
yet, now that you are happy again, you are ready to rush to the other
extreme and throw your money away in thoughtless charity."

She looked so young, so childlike, in the glimmering moonlight that
the tall woodsman laughed.

"To hear my little Kit teaching her elders!"

"The elders must listen. It is for our home. You must spend every
dollar you have, but you must do it in such a way that somebody will
be helped. We don't want money, just money, for itself. To hold it
that way would make us ignoble. It's the wealth we spend that will
make us rich."

"Kit, there's some dark scheme afloat in that fair head of yours. Out
with it!"

"Just for a beginning of things--this: There was a family came to the
Fort to-day. The father is a skilled wood-carver. He is not over
strong and his wife is frailer than he. They have a lot of little
children and he must earn money. It has cost them more than they
expected to get as far as this, even, and they should not go farther.
Yet he is a man, a master workman. It would be an insult to offer him
money. But give him work and you feed his soul as well as his body."

"How, my love? Who that dwells in a log cabin needs fine carvings or
would appreciate them if they had them?"

"Educate them to want and a