Many a time had the boy panted for breath when he rehearsed those grandly decisive, stately replies to those questions of all ages, but his mother had been obdurate.  He could not understand why, but in reality Deborah held her youngest son, who was threatened with death in his youth, to the “Assembly’s Catechism” as a means of filling his mind with spiritual wisdom, and fitting him for that higher state to which he might soon be called.  Ephraim had been strictly forbidden to attend school—­beyond reading he had no education; but his mother resolved that spiritual education he should have, whether he would or not, and whether the doctor would or not.  So Ephraim laboriously read the Bible through, a chapter at a time, and he went, step by step, through the wisdom of the Divines of Westminster.  No matter how much he groaned over it, his mother was pitiless.  Sometimes Caleb plucked up courage and interceded.  “I don’t believe he feels quite ekal to learnin’ of his stint to-night,” he would say, and then his eyes would fall before the terrible stern pathos in Deborah’s, as she would reply in her deep voice:  “If he can’t learn nothin’ about books, he’s got to learn about his own soul.  He’s got to, whether it hurts him or not.  I shouldn’t think, knowin’ what you know, you’d say anything, Caleb Thayer.”

And Caleb’s old face would quiver suddenly like a child’s; he would rub the back of his hand across his eyes, huddle himself into his arm-chair, and say no more; and Deborah would sharply order Ephraim, spying anxiously over his catechism, to go on with the next question.

It was nearly dark to-night when Ephraim finished his stint; he was slower than usual, his progress being somewhat hindered by the surreptitious eating of a hard red apple, which he had stowed away in his jacket-pocket.  Hard apples were strictly forbidden to Ephraim as articles of diet, and to eat many during the season required diplomacy.

The boy’s jaws worked with furious zeal over the apple during his mother’s temporary absences from the room on household tasks, and on her return were mumbling solemnly and innocently the precepts of the catechism, after a spasmodic swallowing.  His father was nodding in his chair and saw nothing, and had he seen would not have betrayed him.  After a little inefficient remonstrance on his own account, Caleb always subsided, and watched anxiously lest Deborah should discover the misdemeanor and descend upon Ephraim.

To-night, after the task was finished, Deborah sent Ephraim stumbling out of the room to bed, muttering remonstrances, his eyes as wild and restless as a cat’s, his ears full of the nocturnal shouts of his play-fellows that came through the open windows.

“Mother, can’t I go out an’ play ball a little while?” sounded in a long wail from the dusk outside the door.

“You go to bed,” answered his mother.  Then the slamming of a door shook the house.