I well recall the class that read this selection. It stretched across the platform in a zigzag row. Some of the boys were tall, some short, and the girls who stood at the head read much better than the boys. The days usually began to grow long, and the snows to melt and drip from the icicles on the roof, when we reached this selection, which was near the end of the book. The windows looked out on the long snowscapes, broken by icy woods and green savin trees. At a little distance the simple church spire was seen gleaming under the blue sky, and the dark slate-stones in the churchyard were a constant reminder of the mortality of us all. The pupils brought their dinners in tin dinner pails, and often shared their sweet-breads with each other. Some of the pupils were very poor, and could only bring corn bread for the noon lunch. James’s father was a prosperous farmer, and provided him with generous lunches, and he used to share them with the poor boys and girls. I had learned to love him for these acts of generosity. James was as honest as he was generous. He had a very sympathetic nature, and it was this that prompted him to ask with a serious face while the rest of the class were laughing,— “What became of _that_ man?” The question haunted me for the half hour that the reading exercise continued, though I had regarded the story as a fiction. Just before I dismissed the class I said,— “James, I should think from your tone of voice and serious look that you rather sympathized with the thief.” “If we knew all things in people’s hearts, we should pity everybody,” he said. “The Bible says that if a man be overtaken in a fault, those that have spiritual strength should restore him. I would never have published a story like that. I would have given the man a chance to regain his self-respect. Wouldn’t you?” I can see him now,—his manly, handsome face, clear blue eyes, high color, and intensity of expression. Five years afterwards he entered Andover Seminary, and the feathery palms of a missionary graveyard under a tropic sky wave over his dead body now. The pupils dropped their slates, and the class lowered their books to hear what I would say. I hesitated. The schoolroom grew painfully still, the wood roared on the fire of the stove, and the evergreen, or creeping-jenny, that had been turned around the stove-pipe, crackled and fell. “I should feel that it was a duty that I owe to the public safety to expose a thief,” I answered. “Wouldn’t you, James?” “I had rather change an evil-doer into an honest man,” he replied. “In that case he might never steal again. I”—he hesitated. There was the same painful stillness in the room. “What, James?”