father and grandfather were praising God in the heavenly
choirs. But he resolved to be good, to take care of his mother, and be
her comfort and joy.

Hard times came on. How to live was the great question; for now that his
grandfather was gone, they could have the pension no longer. The
neighbors were very kind. Sometimes Mr. Middlekauf, Hans's father, who
had a great farm, left a bag of meal for them when he came into the
village. There was little work for Paul to do in the village; but he
kept their own garden in good trim--the onion-bed clear of weeds, and
the potatoes well hilled. Very pleasant it was to work there, where the
honey-bees hummed over the beds of sage, and among his mother's flowers,
and where bumblebees dusted their yellow jackets in the hollyhocks.
Swallows also built their nests under the eaves of the house, and made
the days pleasant with their merry twittering.

The old pensioner had been a land surveyor. The compass which he used
was a poor thing; but he had run many lines with it through the grand
old forest. One day, as Paul was weeding the onions, it occurred to him
that he might become a surveyor; so he went into the house, took the
compass from its case, and sat down to study it. He found his
grandfather's surveying-book, and began to study that. Some parts were
hard and dry; but having resolved to master it, he was not the boy to
give up a good resolution. It was not long before he found out how to
run a line, how to set off angles, and how to ascertain the distance
across a river or pond without measuring it. He went into the woods, and
stripped great rolls of birch bark from the trees, carried them home,
spread them out on the table, and plotted his lines with his dividers
and ruler. He could not afford paper. He took great pleasure in making a
sketch of the ground around the house, the garden, the orchard, the
field, the road, and the river.

The people of New Hope had long been discussing the project of building
a new road to Fair View, which would cross the pond above the mill. But
there was no surveyor in the region to tell them how long the bridge
must be which they would have to build.

"We will send up a kite, and thus get a string across the pond," said
one of the citizens.

"I can ascertain the distance easier than that," said Paul.

Mr. Pimpleberry, the carpenter, who was to build the bridge, laughed,
and looked with contempt upon him, Paul thought, because he was barefoot