Ephraim was a ‘hand’ in one of the large ironworks in Staunton, but he owned a soul above his humble calling, and his mechanical genius was little short of marvellous. He was for ever inventing curious toys and handy appliances, which he traded off among the Staunton boys for sums very far below their actual value. The money thus obtained he devoted partly to the support of an aged aunt, who had brought him up since the death of his father and mother, and partly to the purchase of material for the manufacture of his inventions, or, as he himself styled them, his ‘notions.’ Education, in the ordinary sense of the word, he had never had, but he had managed, nevertheless, by his own efforts and quiet persistence, to acquire an extraordinary amount of general and useful information: a neatly made bookcase, which stood against the wall of his little room, held a supply of books on science, mathematics, and the mechanical arts, which seemed curiously out of place in the homely cabin. But that Ephraim knew their use, and profited by the information he derived from the study of them, was evidenced by the character of the work he turned out, and the increasing favour in which he was held by Mr Coulter, the master of the works in which he was employed. By the boys who formed his chief customers Grizzly was popularly supposed to be very rich, and the one fault they had to find with him was that he hoarded his gains in a miserly fashion, spending not a cent more than was absolutely necessary to provide himself and his aunt with the simple necessaries of life. Here, however, they misjudged Ephraim, for though it was true that he scraped and pinched and denied himself to put aside some small proportion of his not very extensive means, yet there was a purpose in what he did, and his motives were very different from those which the boys in their thoughtless way ascribed to him. The fact was that poor Ephraim’s soul was fired with one strong and overmastering ambition. He longed to rise in the world. He dimly recognised his own powers, and felt within himself a capacity for progress which he could not but see was denied to the bulk of his fellow-workers. His shrewdness early taught him the value of money as a means to this end, and while others spent and squandered, he added dollar after dollar to his little hoard, and watched with keen satisfaction the slowly accumulating pile. He was known to almost everybody in Staunton—there being few homes which did not possess some proof of his skill in handicraft—and he was a general favourite on account of his unfailing good-nature. For though careful, or mean as some called it, with his money, he was always willing to give the work of his hands, and many were the small boys whose happiness had been rendered unbounded by the acquisition of some precious plaything, for which they could not afford to pay, but which Ephraim had not the heart to deny them.