Still, it was a great comfort to the Rev. Dr. Solomon Dryer to meet with so liberal an amount of human sympathy, especially as it had helped him that summer to carry into effect his design of securing an additional assistant. There had always been Mrs. Ross with two or three ambitious young ladies to help her in the male department, and a long and variegated line of “young men preparing for college,” who had acted for the time being as “tutors” under Dr. Dryer, but never before had the Academy trustees ventured on the outlay required for a full-grown, thoroughly educated, competent man to do the doctor’s heavy work for him. Perhaps a certain feeling of jealousy on the doctor’s part; a dread of having any second person so near his own throne of authority, had had something to do with it; but now there had appeared a new element of danger which he found himself compelled to meet. Some mischievous friend and patron of the Academy, mindful, perhaps, of how much he had done towards whittling down the old building, had made it a present of a very complete set of chemical and other instructive apparatus, and what Dr. Dryer himself would do with such new-fangled trash was a good deal more than he could tell. And so--and so--there had been no end of solemn talk about it, but the new assistant had been hired, and was to begin his labors with the fall term, soon to begin. An additional feather in the cap of Dr. Dryer had been the fact that an unusually large number of “boarders” was expected. That is, boys from a distance, who were to find homes among the villagers and drink in daily wisdom at the Academy. Some were to come from even the great city, where the men all know so much and the boys were all so ignorant and so wicked, but wore such good clothes and paid their bills so promptly. Zeb and his crowd were by no means unaware of all these things, and one of the curious results of the spring-board business was that it set Zeb to thinking. “If he sets his face against me and won’t let me come in,” said Zeb, to himself, “I’ll miss all the new experiments. Besides, I really want to study some. There is a good deal in books. I wonder if we couldn’t coax the new man to put us into a course of Scott’s Novels and history? Wonder if he’ll be got up on the same plan as old Sol? Pity him if he is, that’s all. Tell you what, I must manage to get straight with the doctor.” So saying, Zeb wandered off--for it was the very morning after the miller’s dip in the pond--down to the mill-dam. When he got there, he found Pat Murphy just finishing up a piece of work into which he had put all his heart for an hour. “New spring-board, eh?” said Zeb. “Now go and get your saw.” “And what for should I do that same?” asked Pat. “To set your drowning trap,” replied Zeb, calmly. “I want to see how you do it. You cut it three-quarters through, don’t you?”