had risen. He didn't know then of the spiritual change in me and how
generous and great I was feeling and how sublime and beautiful was the
new way in which I had set my feet.

I went out on the porch and stood looking down with a sad countenance.
Aunt Deel followed me.

"W'y, Bart!" she exclaimed, "you're too tired to eat--ayes! Be ye sick?"

I shook my head.

"Peabody," she called, "this boy has worked like a beaver every minute
since you left--ayes he has! I never see anything to beat it--never! I
want you to come right out into the wood-shed an' see what he's
done--this minute--ayes!"

I followed them into the shed.

"W'y of all things!" my uncle exclaimed. "He's worked like a nailer,
ain't he?"

There were tears in his eyes when he took my hand in his rough palm and
squeezed it and said:

"Sometimes I wish ye was little ag'in so I could take ye up in my arms
an' kiss ye just as I used to. Horace Dunkelberg says that you're the
best-lookin' boy he ever see."

"Stop!" Aunt Deel exclaimed with a playful tap on his shoulder. "W'y! ye
mustn't go on like that."

"I'm tellin' just what he said," my uncle answered.

"I guess he only meant that Bart looked clean an' decent--that's
all--ayes! He didn't mean that Bart was purty. Land sakes!--no."

I observed the note of warning in the look she gave my uncle.

"No, I suppose not," he answered, as he turned away with a smile and
brushed one of his eyes with a rough finger.

I repeated the rules I had learned as we went to the table.

"I'm goin' to be like Silas Wright if I can," I added.

"That's the idee!" said Uncle Peabody. "You keep on as you've started
an' everybody'll milk into your pail."

I kept on--not with the vigor of that first day with its new
inspiration--but with growing strength and effectiveness. Nights and
mornings and Saturdays I worked with a will and my book in my pocket or
at the side of the field and was, I know, a help of some value on the
farm. My scholarship improved rapidly and that year I went about as far
as I could hope to go in the little school at Leonard's Corners.

"I wouldn't wonder if ol' Kate was right about our boy," said Aunt Deel
one day when she saw me with my book in the field.

I began to know then that ol' Kate had somehow been at work in my
soul--subconsciously as I would now put it. I was trying to put truth
into the prophecy. As I look at the whole matter these days I can see
that Mr. Grimshaw himself was a