then determined to try the smaller towns and cities, and had wandered on foot through Connecticut, and had applied at hundreds of shops in the many industrial communities of that State, all the time growing fainter and weaker and more discouraged; and had never heard any other response to his request for work than the same monotonous refrain, which had now grown terrible in its suggestion of despair, “No one wanted.” At last he had drifted, he hardly knew how, into Massachusetts and had entered the little town of Atbury. Hope had almost left him, and grim thoughts of suicide filled his mind while he wandered aimlessly through the neat and well-kept streets of the town. In the course of his wanderings he saw a wooden building, upon the front of which a large sign proclaimed that within was a carpenter shop, and that the owner’s name was Thomas Jones. Mechanically Isaac entered the large open doorway on his usual quest. He had no anticipation of success; and when Mr. Jones, who was a handsome middle-aged man of typical Yankee appearance and very brusque and short-spoken, returned the usual answer to his timid query, he turned to go away with a sinking heart, in which the dull pain was not perceptibly keener than it had previously been. But this time an unprecedented incident occurred. A pretty little blond-haired, blue-eyed girl, a mere tot, was standing next to the proprietor when the stranger entered the shop, and she gazed at his handsome though careworn features while he made his pitiable appeal for work, with an expression of evident liking, mingled with sympathy and pity. When he turned to depart, surprise and sorrow showed themselves plainly in the face of the child; and turning to her father—as you have, no doubt, already guessed, sweet reader, it was Alice, Thomas Jones’s only and dearly beloved child—she said: “Why, aren’t you going to give the poor man work, papa? Just see how sad he looks. Don’t let him go.” “Do you want me to keep him, little one?” asked the father, gazing at the pleading face of his little daughter with amused parental fondness. “Yes I do, papa,” said Alice. “I think he is a very good man and I want you to keep him.” “Well,” said Thomas Jones, “for your sake I’ll give him a chance.” [Illustration: NOTHING PLEASED THEM BETTER THAN A “HORSEY-BACK” RIDE _Page 172_]