the eldest
boy doing?"

"No good--no good, I fear. He is in prison," growled Sam in his old
tone.

"And the second?" said the farmer.

"An idle dog. He's a great trouble to my poor daughter."

"And if I were to ask you, ten or a dozen years hence, what your
youngest grandchild was about, might you not have had to say the same of
him?"

"That's true," said Sam, looking up. "I might--yes, I might."

"Now God often takes to Himself those He loves; He loved Tiny Paul, so
He took him."

"Yes; I see God can take better care of him than I can."

"Ay, sure, Sam, that He can and will, and maybe God had another reason
for taking Tiny Paul."

"What can that be?" asked Sam.

"That He might draw you to Himself," said Farmer Grey. "Would you wish
to go where Paul is?"

"Ay, that I would, sir," said Sam, in an eager tone.

"Then, my friend, you must try to become like a little child, as Tiny
Paul was, and be like him," said the farmer.

"I'll try, I'll try," answered Sam. "But how am I to do it, sir? I
feel very weak and foolish and bad; I don't know even how I can try."

"Pray that God will send His Holy Spirit to help you. Trust to Him, and
He will not fail you."

Much more Farmer Grey said in the same style. He came day after day to
see Sam. Sam, in the course of time, became a changed man. He not only
no longer grumbled and growled, and spoke ill of his neighbours, but he
was cheerful and contented, and seemed ready to be kind and do good to
all he met. When he got his leg strong, he went back to his work at the
mill, and Mark used to say that Sam was twice the man he used to be, and
that much more grist was brought to the mill than when he was, as once,
crabbed and sour to all who came near him.

Still Sam was often sad; but it was not about Tiny Paul. It was when he
thought of Ben Page, the miller's son. "Ah," he thought, "how often and
often, when he was a boy, I said things to him, and in his hearing,
which must have done him harm. I might have led him right, and I led
him wrong. Truly my brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground."

STORY ONE, CHAPTER 8.

The Miller of Hillbrook had a tough spirit and a hard heart, like many
other people in the world. It galled him to think that his son was a
felon, and that people could point at him as the felon's father. His
business went on as usual, or rather better than usual, as he was always
at home to attend to it. People knew that if