“Five hours to myself!” he cried exultingly. “It is like finding a day—a day for my very own!”
Realizing that his enthusiasm could not suffice to keep him warm in the zero weather, and that his father would certainly object to his making a fire, he went down cellar, and, by the light of a tallow dip, began work on the model of a self-setting sawmill that he had invented.
“I don’t think that I was any the worse for my short ration of sleep and the extra work in the cold and the uncertain light,” he said; “I was far more than happy. Like Tam o’ Shanter I was glorious—‘O’er all the ills of life victorious.”
When his sawmill was tested in a stream that he had dammed up in the meadow, he set himself to construct a clock that might have an attachment connected with his bed to get him up at a certain hour in the morning. He knew nothing of the mechanism of timepieces beyond the laws of the pendulum, but he succeeded in making a clock of wood, whittling the small pieces in the moments of respite from farm-work. At length the “early-rising machine” was complete and put in operation to his satisfaction. There was now no chance that the weary flesh would betray him into passing a precious half-hour of his time of freedom in sleep.
“John,” said his father, who had but two absorbing interests, his stern religion and his thriving acres, “John, what time is it when you get up in the morning?”
“About one o’clock,” replied the boy, tremblingly.
“What time is that to be stirring about and disturbing the whole family?”
“You told me, Father—” began John.
“I know I gave you that miserable permission,” said the man with a groan, “but I never dreamed that you would get up in the middle of the night.”
The boy wisely said nothing, and the blessed time for study and experimentation was not taken away.