"So you're going to keep on at school, are you? I thought likely, since your father was laid up, you'd he hunting for steady work, so you could help the family along. There's a hard winter coming, you know." There was no mistaking Mr. Minturn's tone. It said, as plainly as words could have done, "That's what I think you ought to do, anyhow." Tip looked troubled. "There's nothing for me to do," he said at last; "I don't know of a place in this town where I could get steady work that I could do; and besides, if there was, I'm after an education now." "My brother is here from Albany," Mr. Minturn made answer to this. "He is a merchant, has a large store there, and keeps a great many clerks. He's been plagued to death lately with one of his boys,--when he sent him home with bundles, he'd open them and help himself; and my brother told me last night, if I could warrant him a boy who was perfectly honest, he'd take him home with him, pay his fare down, and do well by him. I thought of you right away, and I told my brother that you were just the boy for him,--you'd be as true as steel; but then, if you're going to keep on at school, it's all up." Mr. Minium did not add, that he had kept his brother until eleven o'clock the night before, telling him Tip's history,--what a boy he had been, how he had changed, how he was struggling upward; and, finally, the whole story of the examination,--the failure, the downfall, the public confession; nor how his brother had listened eagerly, and had said, with energy, after the story was finished,-- "Such a boy as that ought to be helped; and I'm ready to help him." None of this did Tip hear, but he stooped down for his basket when Mr. Minturn had finished speaking, with a bright blush on his cheek. It was something for a boy like him to be called "as true as steel." "Yes," he said decidedly; "I'm going to keep on at school, that's certain. Thank you all the same." And out he went; yet all the way up and down the streets his thoughts were busy over what he had just heard. It was _time_, certainly, as poor as they were, that he began to work; his mother's sewing supported the family now, and hard and late into the nights she had to work to keep them from hunger. Tip had thought of this question before, but had always comforted himself with the thought that work was not by any means an easy thing to get in the village; the odd jobs which he could find, out of school hours, being really the only things he could get to do. But no such comfort came to him to-day: here was a chance, and a splendid one, for getting steady work, and by and by good wages probably; why wasn't he glad?