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w richer by refusing to give," returned Mother Lemon, and she tucked the penny inside Gabriel's blouse and turned him out the door with her blessing; so that, being a peaceable boy of few words, he objected no longer, but moved along the road toward home, for it was nearly dinner time. He found his stepmother setting the table, and his father busily calculating with figures on a bit of paper. "Get the water, Gabriel, and be quick now," was his welcome from the sorry-faced woman. When he had done all she directed him, there was still a little time, for William and Henry had not come in from the field. Gabriel sat down near his father and, noting a rusty, dusty little book lying on the table, he picked it up. "What is this, father?" he asked, for there were few books in that house. The man looked up from his figuring and sneered. "It is called by some the Book of Life," he said. "As a matter of fact it would not bring two shillings." So saying he returned to his pleasant calculations and Gabriel idly opened the book. His gaze widened, for the verse on which his eyes fell stood out from the others in tiny letters of flame. "_The love of money is the root of all evil_," he read. "Father, father," he exclaimed, "what wonder is this? Look!" The miser turned, impatient of a second interruption. "See the letters of fire!" "I see nothing. You grow stupider every day, Gabriel." "But the letters burn, father," and then the boy read aloud the sentence which for him stood out so vividly on the page. They had a surprising effect upon his listener. The miser grew pale and then red with anger. He rose and, standing over the boy, frowned furiously. "I'll teach you to reprove your father," he cried. "Get out of my house. No dinner for you to-day." The stepmother had heard what Gabriel read, and well she knew the truth of those words. As the astonished boy gathered himself up and moved out the door, she went after him, calling in pretended sharpness; but when he came near, she whispered, "Come to the back of the shed in five minutes," and when Gabriel obeyed, later, he found there a thick piece of bread and a lump of cheese. These he took, hungrily, and ate them in the forest before returning to school. He had never felt so kindly toward school as this afternoon. Were it not for what he learned there, he could not have read the words in the Book of Life; and although they had brought him into trouble, he woul
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