On Saturdays, according to custom, the school had a holiday; and Ishmael spent the morning in working in the garden.  As it was now the depth of winter, there was but little to do, and half a day’s work in the week sufficed to keep all in order.  Saturday afternoons Ishmael went over to open and air the library at Tanglewood, and to return the books he had read and bring back new ones.  Saturday evenings he spent very much as he did the preceding ones of the week—­in giving Reuben his lesson, in posting up the week’s accounts, and in reading law until bed time.

On Sundays Ishmael rested from worldly labors and went to church to refresh his soul.  But for this Sabbath’s rest, made obligatory upon him by the Christian law, Ishmael must have broken down under his severe labors.  As it was, however, the benign Christian law of the Sabbath’s holy rest proved his salvation.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

ONWARD.

  The boldness and the quiet,
    That calmly go ahead,
  In spite of wrath and riot,
    In spite of quick and dead—­
  Warm energy to spur him,
    Keen enterprise to guide. 
  And conscience to upstir him,
    And duty by his side,
  And hope forever singing
    Assurance of success,
  And rapid action springing
    At once to nothing less!

  —­M.F.  Tupper.

In this persevering labor Ishmael cheerfully passed the winter months.

He had not heard one word of Claudia, or of her father, except such scant news as reached him through the judge’s occasional letters to the overseer.

He had received an encouraging note from Mr. Middleton in answer to the letter he had written to that gentleman.  About the first of April Ishmael’s first quarterly school bills began to be due.

Tuition fees were not high in that poor neighborhood, and his pay for each pupil averaged about two dollars a quarter.  His school numbered thirty pupils, about one-third of whom never paid, consequently at the end of the first three months his net receipts were just forty-two dollars.  Not very encouraging this, yet Ishmael was pleased and happy, especially as he felt that he was really doing the little savages intrusted to his care a great deal of good.

Half of this money Ishmael would have forced upon Hannah and Reuben; but Hannah flew into a passion and demanded if her nephew took her for a money-grub; and Reuben quietly assured the young man that his services overpaid his board, which was quite true.

One evening about the middle of April Ishmael sat at his school desk mending pens, setting copies, and keeping an eye on a refractory boy who had been detained after school hours to learn a lesson he had failed to know in his class.

Ishmael had just finished setting his last copy and was engaged in piling the copy-books neatly, one on top of another, when there came a soft tap at the door.