“Perhaps Providence did open this door. If you go to Mr. Barton’s, and resist all temptations to evil, and maintain your good character, that will be proof that Providence opened this door. The proof of it depends on yourself.’

“Then you give your consent?” said James.

“Yes, I give my consent, and hope it will turn out for the best.”

Barton was a happy man on the following Monday, when James presented himself at his door, with all his worldly possessions tied up in a pocket-handkerchief.

“Yer’ve come,” he said. “Yer kin put your duds in yer sleeping-room;” and he showed him where he would lodge, and then proceeded to the manufactory for work.

The establishment was a nasty place, and the business, or much of it, was dirty. Shovelling ashes, attending to the boilers, and disposing of the black-salts, was not an inviting business. However, James did not have the dirtiest part of the work to do, unless it was occasionally. He kept the books, waited on men who delivered ashes at the establishment, paying their bills, and he waited on customers also, acting as salesman. He did other things when necessary, always improving his time, and looking after the establishment, as if he were Barton’s son. He was the first one at the ashery in the morning, and the last one to leave at night. Barton soon learned to trust him with implicit confidence, and a father could not have been kinder to the boy than he was.

One day a man brought a load of ashes, saying, “There are twenty-five bushels.” James had not been at the establishment long before he resolved to measure all ashes purchased as they were unloaded. Mr. Barton usually took them for the number of bushels claimed. James directed the men in the ashery to measure the load in question as it was unloaded, and he kept tally. There were scarcely more than twenty-two bushels.

“Only twenty-two bushels, sir,” said James, to the owner.

“There were twenty-five bushels according to my measure,” said the man.

“And twenty-two according to mine,” replied James. “I will pay you for twenty-two bushels—no more.”

“I think you made a mistake,” remarked the man.

“If there was any mistake, I think you made it,” retorted James. “Three heads are better than one, and three of us attended to the measuring. Shall I pay you for twenty-two bushels?”

“Yes, pay away,” the man answered, sulkily.

Barton came in just then, when James told him what had happened; and afterwards he told him further, that there was a great deal of cheating practised upon him, and it was quite time for his interests to be looked after more closely. All this served to increase Barton’s confidence in James.

The men with whom James had to do about the establishment were about as his mother had supposed—a rough, wicked class. But James had nothing to do with them except in the business, and they made no impression upon him as to weakening his principles. Most of them were terribly profane, and one day James interrupted one of them, saying:

“Jake, what makes you swear so? You are awful. What good does it do you?”

“I s’pose it gits some of yer bad stuff out of me,” was Jake’s prompt reply.