“Father, father,” he exclaimed, “what wonder is this?  Look!” The miser turned, impatient of a second interruption.  “See the letters of fire!”

“I see nothing.  You grow stupider every day, Gabriel.”

“But the letters burn, father,” and then the boy read aloud the sentence which for him stood out so vividly on the page.

They had a surprising effect upon his listener.  The miser grew pale and then red with anger.  He rose and, standing over the boy, frowned furiously.  “I’ll teach you to reprove your father,” he cried.  “Get out of my house.  No dinner for you to-day.”

The stepmother had heard what Gabriel read, and well she knew the truth of those words.

As the astonished boy gathered himself up and moved out the door, she went after him, calling in pretended sharpness; but when he came near, she whispered, “Come to the back of the shed in five minutes,” and when Gabriel obeyed, later, he found there a thick piece of bread and a lump of cheese.

These he took, hungrily, and ate them in the forest before returning to school.  He had never felt so kindly toward school as this afternoon.  Were it not for what he learned there, he could not have read the words in the Book of Life; and although they had brought him into trouble, he would not have foregone the wonder of seeing the living, burning characters which his father could not perceive.  He longed to open those dusty covers once again.

On his way home that afternoon he met two boys teasing a small brown dog.  Its coat was stuck full of burrs and it tried in vain to escape from its tormentors.  The boys stopped to let Gabriel go by, for they had a wholesome respect for his strong right arm and they knew his love for animals.  The trembling little dog looked at him in added fear.

Gabriel stood still.  “Will you give me that dog?” he asked.

The boys backed away with their prize.  “Nothing for nothing,” said the taller, who had the animal under his arm.  “What’ll you give us?”

Gabriel thought.  Never lived a boy with fewer possessions.  Ah!  He suddenly remembered a whistle he had made yesterday.  Diving his hand into his pocket he brought it out and whistled a lively strain upon it.

“This,” he said, approaching.  “I’ll give you this.”

“That for one of us,” replied the tall boy.  “What for the other?”

From the moment the dog heard Gabriel’s voice, its eyes had appealed to him.  Now it struggled to get free, and the big boy struck it.  Its cry sharpened Gabriel’s wits.

“The other shall have a penny,” he said, and drew Mother Lemon’s coin out of his blouse.

The big boy dropped the dog, and he and his companion struggled for the coin, each willing the other should have the whistle.  Gabriel lost no time in catching up the dog and making off with it.

He did not stop running until he had reached a spot by the brookside, hidden amid sheltering trees.  Here he sat down and looked over the forlorn specimen in his lap.  The dog was a rough, dingy object from its long ears to its tail.