lieve his ears. He
took the slip of paper Mr. Walters handed to him and rose to his feet.

"Wait a minute, Dan. How was it you came to tell me this? You might
have stopped your depredations, and I should not have been any the
wiser."

"That wouldn't have been honest, sir," said Dan, looking squarely at
him.

There was a brief silence. Mr. Walters thrummed meditatively on the
table. Dan waited wonderingly.

Finally the factory owner said abruptly, "There's a vacant place for a
boy down here. I want it filled as soon as possible. Will you take
it?"

"Mr. Walters! _Me!_" Dan thought the world must be turning upside
down.

"Yes, you. You are rather young, but the duties are not hard or
difficult to learn. I think you'll do. I was resolved not to fill that
place until I could find a perfectly honest and trustworthy boy for
it. I believe I have found him. I discharged the last boy because he
lied to me about some trifling offence for which I would have forgiven
him if he had told the truth. I can bear with incompetency, but
falsehood and deceit I cannot and will not tolerate," he said, so
sternly that Dan's face paled. "I am convinced that you are incapable
of either. Will you take the place, Dan?"

"I will if you think I can fill it, sir. I will do my best."

"Yes, I believe you will. Perhaps I know more about you than you
think. Businessmen must keep their eyes open. We'll regard this matter
as settled then. Come up tomorrow at eight o'clock. And one word more,
Dan. You have perhaps heard that I am an unjust and hard master. I am
not the former, and you will never have occasion to find me the latter
if you are always as truthful and straightforward as you have been
today. You might easily have deceived me in this matter. That you did
not do so is the best and only recommendation I require. Take those
trout up to my house and leave them. That will do. Good afternoon."

Dan somehow got his dazed self through the glass door and out of the
building. The whole interview had been such a surprise to him that he
was hardly sure whether or not he had dreamed it all.

"I feel as if I were some person else," he said to himself, as he
started down the hot white road. "But Mother was right. I'll stick to
her motto. I wonder what Sam will say to this."

A Christmas Inspiration

"Well, I really think Santa Claus has been very good to us all," said
Jean Lawrence, pulling the pins out of her heavy coil of fair hair a