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1904] place by lantern-light, and many a time Neil would have been glad to hurry his work to get away sooner and be back at his home, which was always warm and bright at breakfast-time.

There were mornings when the boy asked himself if it were worth while, and was disposed to laugh at the strict instructions under which he worked, There seemed little need, indeed, to sweep an unused barn floor every morning, and certainly there could be little reason why that sweeping could not be done as well after breakfasts before. Then this matter of sweeping east or west grew to appear more and more an absurdity as the weeks passed, and sometimes Neil thought no sane man could ever have required such a thing. Then again, he knew that the doctor, though having a reputation for odd ways, would hardly have hired him to do this without some good reason.

But what with working the harder to warm his blood, and whistling to raise his spirits, and determining not to question his employer’s purposes, the task was always done quickly and well and according to instructions, and the walk home nearly always found him in a wholesome glow of body and a cheerful frame of mind, and Neil learned by degrees that there is nothing like a bit of work well done to give satisfaction to the worker.

Of course he counted his earnings from day to day. If each new day brought a new fight, it also brought an addition to the sum in store for the purchase of the pony, and with each sweeping-time past he was one day nearer spring and the realization of his happiness.

So November and December passed. Christmas had come and gone, With steady persistence Neil had kept at his work, and, oddly enough, he was getting happiness out of it. He began to be conscious now of a new element in his father's attitude toward him which showed in voice and look—something that filled his heart full of a pride and pleasure that was new to him, too, though he could not at all have defined it. His mother sometimes asked him about his task, and, though there seemed to be nothing he could tell her, the sympathy in her tone was like that in his father’s eyes, Once he had even overheard his father say something about being “proud of the youngstet’s pertinacity ”; and though he had not the vaguest idea what pertinacity might be, he could not doubt that he was winning some sort of approval.

But just at the beginning of the New Year something happened which cast a gloom over Neil’s whole outlook. On the last night of December a party of boys and girls met at the home of one of Neil’s friends to watch the old year out. It was a merry party, and a jolly good time they had—so jolly, indeed, that not only was the old year gone, but more than one of the early hours of the new year had crept away before the party broke up.

This was a very unusual thing indeed for Neil, who was an early bird at both ends of the day; and knowing how very sleepy he was likely to be when rising-time came before dawn, he set his alarm-clock on a chair beside his pillow, so that it might not fail to awaken him. And then he crept into his bed, a very tired boy indeed, and slept so soundly that he did not hear the alarm, after all, when it buzzed out its warning at six o’clock.

But a habit often has a surprising influence, and it was not long till, even against the weight of his weariness, which had been quite proof against the alarm, Neil’s habit of waking early was strong enough to open his eyes. The quick certainty that he must be very late filled his mind. He sprang out of bed and struck a light. It was twenty minutes after six, and he knew that he must hurry as he had never before been obliged to do if he were to finish his sweeping in time.

He dressed so fast that he forgot the chill of the room, which often made him shiver; and then, with a dash of cold water in his face and a very hasty effort to pull rebellious hair into order, he was away, out into the cold gray morning, and off to his duty.

By the light of the lantern he found hisbroom, and began sweeping away with all his might; and just as the mill whistles commenced to blow for seven o'clock, he was hanging up his broom again, with the satisfaction of having won his race against time.

His new little calendar for the new year, to which his account of the sweeping must now be transferred, hung on the wall beside the old