Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/212

 the Superintendent was summarily brought on the scene to inquire into its cause, and gleaning some little inkling of Lonely's utter depravity from many startling and contradictory explanations, ejected our embittered young barbarian from the class and from the Sunday School itself.

So it was Em'ly Bird's romance, bearing the dubious title of "Agatha Boring's Long Ordeal," into which Lonely first dipped. It was a startling new type of story to the eager and avid-minded boy,—like neither "The Headless Horseman" nor the "Swiss Family Robinson," for it told, in short sentences and easy words, of the suffering and heroism of Agatha Doring, tortured and ill-treated by an unconverted maiden aunt, who often sent the child to bed supperless, simply for being true to her own conscience, and often beat her, simply because she was so scrupulously honest. But in the end, after many troubles, included in which was an almost fatal attack of brain-fever, Agatha was the means of leading the maiden aunt to grace, even while casting seeds of piety far and wide along her every-day path of life.