Alas for human hopes! one rainy afternoon I saw the squire riding down the lane.  I ran off to the barn, ashamed to face him, and afraid to meet my father.  They sat on the porch and talked for a long time.

At last my curiosity overcame my fear, and I stole back to the house, and went into mother’s room to see if I could hear what they were talking about.

“Why, the boy could be spared well enough, but he doesn’t know anything about the business,” said my father.

“There is one thing he does know,” said the squire, “he knows how to tell the truth.”  He then related the circumstance which I so much dreaded to have my father hear.

After he had gone, my father called me to him, and told me that the squire was going to start a store in the village, and wanted a boy to help, and that I could go if I wished.  I went, and remained in the village store until it became a city store.  People say that I got my start in life when I entered Albright’s store, but I will always declare that I got it while I was waiting for the grist.

[Illustration]

[Illustration:  “Twenty dollars against themselves.”]

A BOY’S LESSONS IN DISHONESTY

“Have you examined that bill, James?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything wrong?”

“I find two errors.”

“Ah, let me see.”

The lad handed his employer a long bill that had been placed on his desk for examination.

“Here is an error of ten dollars in the calculation which they have made against themselves; and another of ten dollars in the footing.”

“Also against themselves?”

“Yes, sir.”

The merchant smiled in a way that struck the lad as peculiar.

“Twenty dollars against themselves,” he remarked in a kind of pleased surprise; “trusty clerks they must have!”

“Shall I correct the figures?” asked the lad.

“No; let them correct their own mistakes.  We don’t examine bill’s for other people’s benefit,” replied the merchant.  “It will be time to correct those errors when they find them out.  All so much gain as it now stands.”

The boy’s delicate moral sense was shocked at so unexpected a remark.  He was the son of a poor widow, who had taught him that to be just is the duty of man, and that “honesty is the best policy” always.

Mr. Carman, the merchant, in whose employment the lad James had been for only a few months, was an old friend of James’s father, and a man in whom he had the highest confidence.  In fact, James had always looked upon him as a kind of model man.  When Mr. Carman agreed to take him into his store, the lad felt that great good fortune was in his way.

“Let them correct their own mistakes.”  These words made a strong impression on the mind of James Lewis.  When first spoken by Mr. Carman, with the meaning which he gave them, as we have said, he felt shocked.  But as he turned them over again in his thoughts, and remembered that this man stood very high in his mother’s estimation, he began to think that perhaps the thing was fair enough in business.  Mr. Carman was hardly the man to do wrong.