“Shall I send up another?” asked the shoemaker.

“No, no,” exclaimed the child, imploringly.  “You say God lives up there, and he mayn’t like it.”

The shoemaker laughed, but presently he said, as if to himself, “There is too much imagination there.  There will be a poet, if we don’t take care.”

The shoemaker offered to teach Simon to read, and to solidify his mind, as he termed it, by arithmetic, and then to teach him to work at his trade.  His mother was very glad, and thought shoemaking would be a good trade for the boy; and that with Mr. Watson she should have him always near her.  He was growing now a great lad, and was especially strong, and of a frank and daring habit.  He was especially indignant at any act of oppression of the weak by the strong, and not seldom got into trouble by his championship of the injured in such cases among the boys of the neighborhood.

He was now about twelve years of age; when, going one day with a basket of clothes on his head to Mr. Spires’s for his mother, he was noticed by Mr. Spires himself from his counting-house window.  The great war was raging; there was much distress among the manufacturers; and the people were suffering and exasperated against their masters.  Mr. Spires, as a staunch tory, and supporter of the war, was particularly obnoxious to the workpeople, who uttered violent threats against him.  For this reason his premises were strictly guarded, and at the entrance of his yard, just within the gates, was chained a huge and fierce mastiff, his chain allowing him to approach near enough to intimidate any stranger, though not to reach him.  The dog knew the people who came regularly about, and seemed not to notice them, but on the entrance of a stranger, he rose up, barked fiercely, and came to the length of his chain.  This always drew the attention of the porter, if he were away from his box, and few persons dared to pass till he came.

Simon Deg was advancing with the basket of clean linen on his head, when the dog rushed out, and barking loudly, came exactly opposite to him, within a few feet.  The boy, a good deal startled at first, reared himself with his back against the wall, but at a glance perceiving that the dog was at the length of his tether, he seemed to enjoy his situation, and stood smiling at the furious animal, and lifting his basket with both hands above his head, nodded to him, as if to say, “Well, old boy, you’d like to eat me, wouldn’t you?”

Mr. Spires, who sat near his counting-house window at his books, was struck with the bold and handsome bearing of the boy, and said to a clerk: 

“What boy is that?”

“It is Jenny Deg’s,” was the answer.

“Ha! that boy!  Zounds! how boys do grow!  Why that’s the child that Jenny Deg was carrying when she came to Stockington:  and what a strong, handsome, bright-looking fellow he is now!”

As the boy was returning, Mr. Spires called him to the counting-house door, and put some questions to him as to what he was doing and learning, and so on.