Cold better, eh?"

"Oh, I'm fine and dandy. How's yourself?" He was prancing along by
the man's side, with a gait peculiar, even to himself. The orphans all
had a curious, orphan-like habit of rendering pedestrianism as
difficult as possible. The twins would stagger around for a whole day
tied together at the ankles, and Tim now displayed this family
peculiarity by hirpling along, one foot up on the smooth, hard roadway,
the other plunging far into the deep snow.

"Very well, thank you," said Mr. Scott. "Where are you going?"

"Down to see John." His tone revealed his pride in the daring
confession. It was a splendid thing to have such a wicked man for a
chum, a man whom folks said even the minister feared.

"Ah! What are you reading now?"

"'We haven't got anything new for to-night. I was wishin' I had a
book." He looked up slyly, to see if the hint had taken effect.

The minister fell easily into the trap. "Dear me! I'm sorry I didn't
know that. You might have had 'Nicholas Nickleby.' I'll send it to
school with Tommy to-morrow, if you promise you won't read any of it in
school, eh?"

"All right; 'course not," cried Tim righteously.

"And what have you been reading since you finished 'Pilgrim's
Progress'?"

The minister looked down enviously at the small, hobbling figure. If
he had only been wise enough, he reflected, to go to that man with this
child's faith and good-fellowship, they might have been on such terms
of intimacy now, and he might have helped to cure that look of pain in
John McIntyre's eyes.

"We've been readin' about a chap named Job. It's in the Bible. Ever
read it?"

"The Bible!" The minister paused in the road. What miracle had led
the child thither? "Did McIntyre read Job to you?"

"Yes."

"Every bit of it?"

"Yes--all but a lot o' mushy talk in the middle. Them jiggers had such
an awful lot to say we skipped some of it. But we read the end."

"Ah, you've got a fine story-book now, Tim! You'll not find such
another. Ask McIntyre to read you some more of its stories. They're
better than 'Nicholas Nickleby.'"

Tim looked dubious. With the exception of Job, and Daniel in the
lions' den, and extracts from one or two thrilling tales like that, he
considered the Bible rather tame. His foster-father read a chapter to
them every night before they went to bed, but the eldest of the family
was generally too much occupied in pinching the twins, or keeping them