Clayton came in while Justin was tip-toeing before the book shelves. His appearance and manner had changed for the better. He looked at the boy with kindly interest, and was almost cheerful. “Do you think you would like to become an educated man, Justin?” The boy’s eyes shone. “I don’t know. Would I have to read all of those?” A smile twitched the corners of Clayton’s dark eyes. “Not all of them at once, and perhaps some of them never. At any rate we wouldn’t try to begin so high up as that.” He sat down and began to question the boy concerning his acquirements, and found they were not inconsiderable, for the lonely minister had tried to be faithful to his trust. Except in one line, the Scriptural, the faculty of the imagination had alone been neglected; and that seemed strange, for Peter Wingate was so quiveringly imaginative that he lived perpetually in a dream world which he believed to be real. Justin had never heard of the Greek gods and demi-gods; the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, the Arabian Nights, were unknown names to him; he had never visited Liliput and the land of the giants with Gulliver, nor even gone sailing romantic seas and living in blissful and lonely exile with Robinson Crusoe and Friday. Yet he knew all the wonderful and attractive stories of the Bible. The friendship of David and Jonathan was as real to him as the love that existed between himself and the minister. He knew the height of Goliath, and had even measured on the ground, with the minister’s help, the length of that giant’s spear. He had seen the baby Moses drawn from his cradled nest in the bulrushes; had witnessed the breaking pitchers and the flashing lights of Gideon’s band; and had watched in awed wonder when, at the command of Joshua, the sun had stopped over Gideon and the moon had hung suspended above the valley of Ajalon. Clayton’s dark eyes looked into the blue eyes of the boy as they talked, and the choking ache which had been in his heart when he came to that lonely home in that lonely valley all but ceased. “You haven’t missed so very much after all, Justin. I guess there aren’t any better stories than those you know anywhere in the world. But you know them so well now that we will begin on something else.” Stepping to a box he drew out a book. When he came back with it Justin recognized the title, “Robinson Crusoe,” for he had once heard the minister mention it in a sermon. “Is it a story?” he asked, eagerly. “One of the best stories ever written, I think. It has made boys run away to sea, I’ve been told, but I don’t believe you will be harmed by it in that way. Seven-league boots would be needed to run away to sea from here. So we’ll risk reading it.”