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 you do?" in his best manner, and hastened to ask what the white mark was on the coal for.

"To mark how much coal there be," said the Porter, "so as we'll know if any one nicks it. So don't you go off with none in your pockets, young gentleman!"

This seemed, at the time, but a merry jest, and Peter felt at once that the porter was a friendly sort, with no nonsense about him. But later the words came back to Peter with a new meaning.

Have you ever gone into a farm-house kitchen on a baking day, and seen the great crock of dough set by the fire to rise? If you have, and if you were at that time still young enough to be interested in everything you saw, you will remember that you found yourself quite unable to resist the temptation to poke your finger into the soft round of dough that curved inside the pan like a giant mushroom. And you will remember that your finger made a dent in the dough, and that slowly, but quite surely, the dent disappeared, and the dough looked quite the same as it did before you touched it. Unless, of course, your hand was extra dirty, in