a wild oats. One such stem grew near the road, and Martin,
with a quick sweep of his hand, pulled off the wild oat heads and
went on through the dusty road, scattering the oats as he walked.
Martin was thinking.

"Teacher doesn't know how 'tis," he said. "I have to carry 'round
milk mornings and nights, and I have to go down to the barn to hunt
eggs, and I have to help pa about the stage horses, and sometimes I
have to ride the horses back to be shod, and I have to walk a mile
to day-school and back, and learn my lessons, and I'd like to know
how teacher thinks I've got much time to read the Bible some every
day. There's lots of days I don't believe pa reads any in the Bible.
He's too busy driving the stage and 'tending to the horses. And ma
doesn't read it, because she has to cook for the teamster boarders.
It's a real pretty book teacher's given me, though."

Martin felt inside his jacket, and brought out a little New
Testament. It was only a ten-cent Testament, for Miss Bruce, his
Sunday-school teacher, did not have money enough to buy Bibles for
her class of thirteen boys. She had felt that she must do something,
however, for the boys were destitute of Bibles of their own.

The best she could do was to buy small Testaments with red covers,
and she had cut a piece of bright red, inch-wide ribbon into
thirteen lengths, had raveled out the ends so as to make fringe, and
had put a piece of this fringed ribbon into each boy's New Testament
for a book-mark. The boys thought a great deal of the pieces of
ribbon, they were so bright and pretty. Miss Bruce had written some
special little message to each boy in the front of his Testament.
The general purport of each message was that the book was given with
the teacher's prayer that the boy might learn to love the Bible and
might become a real Christian. Some of the boys let the others read
what was written in the Testaments, and some boys did not.

Miss Bruce had given them the Testaments to-day, and had said that
she hoped each boy would read a little, daily, in his Testament,
even if it were only two or three verses.

"I wonder if teacher'll ask me next Sunday whether I've read any?"
Martin questioned himself now, as he admiringly eyed his piece of
red ribbon. "It'll be a shame if I have to tell her, the first
Sunday, that I've forgot it! I'd better read one verse now, so I can
say I read that, anyway, if I forget the rest of the week."

Martin sat down beside the ro