After supper I went out and lay on the grass, looking up into the blue sky, thinking. Twilight came, then darkness. A bell rang, and all the boys went upstairs to bed. I followed. We knelt by our beds; Gray-beard rapped on the banister with his penknife; when there was silence, he said slowly, and in a low tone, "Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name." We repeated with him this prayer that was taught over a thousand years ago. The tardy ones with labored breathing cut almost every word; but I repeated them carefully, and, although I had said them a hundred times before, now, for the first time since I had been in the school, I began to wonder what they meant. Lester, Edwin, and I got into bed; my place was in the middle. "Frank, what makes you so quiet?" asked Lester, nudging me with his elbow. Before I could answer Edwin began tugging at the sheet, saying, "Lester, you've too much sheet over there!" They both pulled the bedcovers and kicked at each other good-naturedly for a while, and then quieted down. I received some of the kicks too, but did not join in the fun. There was silence for a time, and then Edwin said, "Say, boys, I've been feeling bad this afternoon. When I got home from the river, my father scolded me like everything. He said something about my being with some boys who teased a poor Winnebago boy, and he talked to me a long time. He never give me chance to say I didn't see a Winnebago boy to-day; I was all the morning down to the river swimming. I couldn't understand it, and I don't now. Say, Frank, does your father scold you sometimes?" "Edwin, tell us a story," I said. "Do!" exclaimed the other boys. "Tell us a story." Chapter XV Joe It was recess. The laughter and shouts of the boys, as they chased each other and wrestled, mingled with the song of the wren and other birds that inhabited the woods surrounding the school. Not less merry or boisterous were the laughter and calls of the girls, although their territory for play was limited and fenced in, to keep them from too free a communication with the rougher sex. Study and work were forgotten, and every boy and girl romped in the sunshine, and the atmosphere around seemed to be alive with happiness. Suddenly the boys began to gather curiously around two objects upon the ground. The girls, seeing this unusual stir, came running to their fence, climbed up as far as they dared, and asked the nearest boys what it was that attracted so large a crowd. It was a pitiful scene,--there, sitting on the green grass, was a crippled old woman of about seventy or eighty years, speaking in the kindest and gentlest of tones, with inflections of the voice hard to describe, but which brought to one's mind the twittering of a mother bird to its young, and passing her crooked fingers and wrinkled hands over the brown back of a miserable, naked, little boy who was digging his chubby fists in his eyes to squeeze away the tears that flowed incessantly.