The gang noticed my defection that winter and asked me what was wrong. “I’m trying to educate myself,” I said. “Yellow Belly” sniffed, and called contemptuously: “Say, fellows! he’s got the book-bats, Priddy has.” “Well,” I contended, “you fellows can hang around this drug-store corner from now till doomsday, if you want. I want to learn enough to get out of the mill. Besides, it’s none of your business what I do, anyway!” and with that fling I had to run off to escape the stones that were hurled at me. _Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent Shut Us out from Eden_ _Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent Shut Us out from Eden_ The numerous quarrels in which my foster parents indulged, and during which my aunt was not averse to proclaiming loudly from the open windows insulting comments on her neighbors, finally brought a lawyer’s letter to the house in which we were living, summarily ordering us to remove ourselves from the neighborhood. Aunt flew into a passion when the letter was read, and had all manner of sharp criticism for “neighbors who don’t tend to their own faults.” Uncle bowed his head for shame, while I went to my study, shut the door, and prayed through tears that God would, in some way, give me a good home like many another boy, and that He might make aunt and uncle more respectable. Under the shock of this notice my uncle gave up his work, and said that he was determined to make a new start in some other place. “I’m going to see, Millie,” he said, “if I can’t get somewhere to work, in God’s world, where there aren’t saloons to tempt us. I’ll send for you as soon as I find a place like that.” Word soon came from him telling me to give up my work; that he had secured a place in a Connecticut cotton-mill. His letter also stated that we should live in a quiet little village where there were no saloons permitted by the corporation, and that our home would be in a little brick cottage with a flower bed and lawn inside the front gate! “What a god-send this will prove,” said Aunt Millie, “to get away from the saloons. Maybe Stanwood’ll keep sober now. Let us hope so!” So at seventeen years of age I went with my aunt and uncle to the village, a strange, quiet place after the rumble and confusion of the city. It was well into spring when we arrived, and we found the village beautiful with restful green grass and the fruit-tree blossoms. As soon as we arrived my uncle took us to the corporation boarding-house, a dismal brick structure, like a mill, with a yellow verandah on its face. “We’ll have to put up here till the furniture comes,” announced uncle. The next morning I took my overalls with me and began work in the mule-room. It was a pleasant place when contrasted with the places I had worked in in the city. The overseer did not urge us on so strenuously. There was not that terrible line of unemployed in the alley every morning, waiting to take our places.