a ten-dollar note.' An' that's the net results on't," concluded David,
"that I've got the hoss, an' he's cost me jest thirty-five dollars."




CHAPTER III.


Master Jacky Carling was a very nice boy, but not at that time in his
career the safest person to whom to intrust a missive in case its sure
and speedy delivery were a matter of importance. But he protested with
so much earnestness and good will that it should be put into the very
first post-box he came to on his way to school, and that nothing could
induce him to forget it, that Mary Blake, his aunt, confidante and not
unfrequently counsel and advocate, gave it him to post, and dismissed
the matter from her mind. Unfortunately the weather, which had been very
frosty, had changed in the night to a summer-like mildness. As Jacky
opened the door, three or four of his school-fellows were passing. He
felt the softness of the spring morning, and to their injunction to
"Hurry up and come along!" replied with an entreaty to "Wait a minute
till he left his overcoat" (all boys hate an overcoat), and plunged back
into the house.

If John Lenox (John Knox Lenox) had received Miss Blake's note of
condolence and sympathy, written in reply to his own, wherein, besides
speaking of his bereavement, he had made allusion to some changes in his
prospects and some necessary alterations in his ways for a time, he
might perhaps have read between the lines something more than merely a
kind expression of her sorrow for the trouble which had come upon him,