The Black Forge Mills

by William P. Chipman

At the close of the school, Mr. Greenough informed Ray it would be necessary for him to remain. Daisy Lawton lingered a moment after the other scholars had gone, and came over to his side.

"This is too bad, Ray!" she said.

"At almost any other time," he replied, "I should not have cared about it; but as this is Friday, and Mr. Woodhull is away, it is a little annoying that I must remain."

She did not care to hinder him in his work, and so left the schoolroom and went off slowly toward her home. As she reached the corner of the street on which she lived, her brother Edward was just ahead of her. He saw her, and paused a moment, as though he would wait until she came up. He changed his mind, however, and hurried on to the house. As he entered the door he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket; something white came out with it, and, caught by a current of air, it fluttered down to the walk. He went on into the house without noticing it, and Daisy, as she reached it, stooped down and picked it up. It was Ray's copy of the examples.

She stood for a moment undecided what to do, then she turned and sped back toward the schoolhouse. Reaching it, she entered and hurried up to the senior room. Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed since she left, and Ray could not have performed a quarter of the examples. Hurrying over to his desk, she laid the paper before him.

"I found it," she said, simply, and then colored violently, fearing she had not told the whole truth.

He understood her at once, and spared her any further confession. They were alone, Mr. Greenough having requested Ray to leave the examples at his house when he went down to the wharf, and had then hurried away to meet some engagement.

"Please let it remain between us that this paper was ever found," he said, gravely. And strapping up his books he accompanied her down to the street. At the gate they parted, each carrying away a heavy burden. She grieved that her only brother, whom she had believed, until recently, to be noble and manly, should be guilty of deception and theft, for she could give his act no lighter term; he, sorrowful that he should so unintentionally be the cause of another's sin. But both believed in the power of prayer, and from their hearts there went up a common cry that God would lead the offending one to the only source of permanent reform.

The weeks passed swiftly by, and the month of June came. Two weeks more, and the school year would end. Ray, notwithstanding every hindrance thrown in his way by Edward Lawton, had steadily advanced in his studies, and there was little doubt in the minds of teachers or scholars but that he would carry off the honors of the class. Ned Lawton himself secretly admitted it, and his only hope now was to win the second prize; but even of this he was not entirely sure, since among the outsiders there were one or two who ranked nearly if not quite as high as he. Then a thing happened which nearly took away from Ray even the possibility of graduating, and removed the second prize completely beyond the slightest hope of Edward Lawton's securing it.

Ray, at the close of school, had hurried off to do the errands entrusted to him, for huge clouds and a low muttering of thunder in the west indicated a storm, and he was anxious to get well off on his way toward Long Point Farm before the tempest came. His errands finished, he hastened down to the boat to find, to his surprise, that it was gone. On inquiring of an old sailor who frequented the wharf if he had seen any one take the boat, he, taking his pipe from his mouth, had replied: