“John, what time is it when you get up in the morning?”

“About one o’clock,” I replied in a low, meek, guilty tone of voice.

“And what kind of a time is that, getting up in the middle of the night and disturbing the whole family?”

I simply reminded him of the permission he had freely granted me to get up as early as I wished.

“I know it,” he said, in an almost agonized tone of voice, “I know I gave you that miserable permission, but I never imagined that you would get up in the middle of the night.”

To this I cautiously made no reply, but continued to listen for the heavenly one-o’clock call, and it never failed.

After completing my self-setting sawmill I dammed one of the streams in the meadow and put the mill in operation.  This invention was speedily followed by a lot of others,—­water-wheels, curious doorlocks and latches, thermometers, hygrometers, pyrometers, clocks, a barometer, an automatic contrivance for feeding the horses at any required hour, a lamp-lighter and fire-lighter, an early-or-late-rising machine, and so forth.

After the sawmill was proved and discharged from my mind, I happened to think it would be a fine thing to make a timekeeper which would tell the day of the week and the day of the month, as well as strike like a common clock and point out the hours; also to have an attachment whereby it could be connected with a bedstead to set me on my feet at any hour in the morning; also to start fires, light lamps, etc.  I had learned the time laws of the pendulum from a book, but with this exception I knew nothing of timekeepers, for I had never seen the inside of any sort of clock or watch.  After long brooding, the novel clock was at length completed in my mind, and was tried and found to be durable and to work well and look well before I had begun to build it in wood.  I carried small parts of it in my pocket to whittle at when I was out at work on the farm, using every spare or stolen moment within reach without father’s knowing anything about it.  In the middle of summer, when harvesting was in progress, the novel time-machine was nearly completed.  It was hidden upstairs in a spare bedroom where some tools were kept.  I did the making and mending on the farm, but one day at noon, when I happened to be away, father went upstairs for a hammer or something and discovered the mysterious machine back of the bedstead.  My sister Margaret saw him on his knees examining it, and at the first opportunity whispered in my ear, “John, fayther saw that thing you’re making upstairs.”  None of the family knew what I was doing, but they knew very well that all such work was frowned on by father, and kindly warned me of any danger that threatened my plans.  The fine invention seemed doomed to destruction before its time-ticking commenced, though I thought it handsome, had so long carried it in my mind, and like the nest of Burns’s wee mousie it had cost me mony a weary whittling nibble.  When we were at dinner several days after the sad discovery, father began to clear his throat to speak, and I feared the doom of martyrdom was about to be pronounced on my grand clock.