"How much have you?" he asked.
Mr. Lightenhome told him.
Then, without a word, Elnathan got up and went out. His head sunk in thought, and his hands in his trousers' pockets, he sauntered on in the wintry air while he mentally calculated how long Mr. Lightenhome's funds would last. "Not any later than next Christmas he will be in the poorhouse again." He walked only a few steps. Then he stopped. "Will he?" he cried. "Not if I know it."
This was a big resolve for a boy of fifteen, and the next morning Elnathan himself thought so. He thought so even to the extent of considering a retreat from the high task which he had the previous day laid before himself. Then he looked at Mr. Lightenhome, who had aged perceptibly in the last hours. Evidently he had lain awake in the night calculating how long his money would last. The sight of him nerved the boy afresh. "I am not going back on it," he told himself, vigorously. "I am just going to dig out all the gold there is in me. Keeping Uncle Chris out of the poorhouse is worth it."
But he did not confide in the old man. "He would say it was too big a job for me, and talk about how I ought to get some schooling," concluded the boy.
Now it came about that the room, which, while it had not been the habitation of lords, had been the abode of kingly kindness, became a silent place. The anxious old man had no heart to joke. He had been to the poorhouse, and had escaped from it into freedom. His whole nature rebelled at the thought of returning. And yet he tried to school himself to look forward to it bravely. "If it is the Lord's will," he told himself, "I will have to bow to it."
Meanwhile those who employed Elnathan were finding him a very different boy from the slow, lagging Elnathan they had known. If he was sent on an errand, he made speed. "Here! get the gold out of your legs," he would say to himself. If he sprouted potatoes for a grocer in his cellar, "There's gold in your fingers, El," he would say. "Get it out as quick as you can."
He now worked more hours in a day than he had ever worked before, so that he was too tired to talk much at meals, and too sleepy in the evening. But there was a light in his eyes when they rested on Mr. Lightenhome that made the old man's heart thrill.
"Elnathan would stand by me if he could," he would say to himself. "He's a good boy. I must not worry him."
A month after Elnathan had begun his great labor of love, an astonishing thing happened to him. He had a choice of two places offered him as general utility boy in a grocery. Once he would have told Mr. Lightenhome, and asked his advice as to which offer he should take, but he was now carrying his own burdens. He considered carefully, and then he went to Mr. Benson.