The  son  received  ten  cents  a  week  for  keeping  the
bedrooms  supplied  with  coal.  Several  nights  he  had
been  routed  out  of  bed,  and  made  to  stumble  down  to
the  coalhouse,  while  his  father  impatiently  held  the
lantern,  to  do  the  neglected  task.  He  was  perpetually
losing  things.  Hammers,  saws,  dewed  in  the  morning
grass,  a  saddle  that  he  had  forgotten  to  hang  up, — these
would  furnish  damning  indictments  of  his  carefulness.
To  teach  him  responsibility,  the  three  newly-purchased
crates  of  Leghorns  were  put  in  his  charge.  Many  a  time
a  dried  water-trough  or  a  suspiciously  pecked-up  chicken-
run,  its  last  grain  of  corn  consumed,  brought  him  into
trouble.  Perhaps  he  had  spent  the  afternoon  whittling
a  dagger,  or  carefully  cleaning  an  old  horse-skull  dis-
covered under  the  green  valley  pines.  He  was  very
proud  at  the  idea  of  possessing  the  chickens,  and  grew
fond  of  them;  but  remembering  to  attend  to  them  was
a  very  different  matter.
"I  don't  never  have  any  time  for  myself,  mother,"  he
would  complain,  after  a  scene  with  Paul.  "The  Highland
boys  don't  have  to  work  all  the  time."

"Your  father  is  very  busy,  Pell;  if  you  don't  help
him,  who  will?"

Continued  repetition  of  these  negligences  caused  tin-
gling reminders  to  be  applied  to  the  boy.  Paul  hated  to
whip  his  son;  he  almost  despised  himself  for  causing
suffering  to  a  smaller  human;  but  what  was  he  to  do?
Pelham  grew  familiar  with  the  feel  of  his  father's  belt;
and  still  did  not,  or  could  not,  change  his  ways.
