Occasionally he noticed his uncle and Elmer throwing stones high up in the air, and sometimes when the stones went too high to be followed by the naked eye, he supposed that they pierced the arch and lodged on the other side. The fact that while he was at the poorhouse a few persons had died and been buried in the ground was till fresh in his memory, and from the oaths and unkind language of his mother he had come to the conclusion that all must die and be buried in the same manner. What became of them after death he could not fathom, but he concluded that the frost in the winter-time was a sort of cold vapor arising from the bodies of those who were dead and that such things were all governed by the great man above the arch. In the village where his mother had lived, very little attention was given to family quarrels or to the troubles of children, but in this new neighborhood it was different. A dear old couple by the name of Hahn, living very close, soon became greatly interested in the child Edwin. Many times they listened with deepest sympathy to his cries of agony and terror, knowing that his cries were caused by cruel blows or kicks. Then when the little fellow, all bleeding and bruised, would be discovered hobbling about and endeavoring to comprehend what was expected of him that he might the more perfectly perform the task THat had been assigned him, their hearts were filled with indignation and pity. "I don't see how it is," said Mrs. Hahn one day to her husband at the close of the midday meal. "Now, that Mrs. Fischer seems in some ways to be a pretty good sort of woman, but when she speaks to her son, she acts like Satan himself. Only yesterday I saw her out cleaning up the yard, and she seemed quite good-natured until she discovered Ed coming out to help her. Then, without telling him where to get it, she told him to hustle around and find her a picket, for she wanted to fix the fence. I saw right away that he didn't know what a picket was, but I wanted to see what he would do. He didn't ask. Instead he ran around the house looking in every direction and came back to tell her that he couldn't find any. Then, in a tone that she would not have used for the dog she yelled at him that it was of no use to expect an idiot like him to find anything. Next she went to a pile of pickets that was near the barn and easily got herself what she was wanting. Still she didn't explain anything to Edwin, but I could see that the boy knew then what a 'picket' looked like. "Now, Pa, I'll tell you what I'd like to do. Since his mother acts toward him as she does, I'd like to ask him over here whenever he can come, just as though he were coming to help us, you know, and then we could tell him about many of these things that he doesn't know. Perhaps if he knew better what they meant, it would not be so hard for him, and he would escape some of the abuse."