“So am I,” responded James.

“Where?”

“At Geauga Seminary.”

“Ah! we had a teacher from that seminary two years ago, and he was as good a teacher as we ever had.”

“That is fortunate for me,” remarked James, pleasantly. “If he had not proved a good teacher, you would not want another from that institution.”

“Very like,” replied Mr. Nelson. “But come, you can’t look after any more schools to-night; it is getting dark. Come in, and stop over night with us.”

James accepted the cordial invitation, stopped with the family over night, and, on the following day, continued his school-hunting trip. But he did not find a school. He met with one committee-man who declined to hire him because “We had one feller from Gaga Siminary, and he made sich a botch of it that we don’t want another.”

After two days of hard work in the vain search for a school, James reached home more thoroughly discouraged than his mother ever knew him to be before.

“It is impossible to find a school; most of them have teachers engaged,” said James. And he gave a full account of his travels and disappointments.

“Perhaps the Lord has something better for you in store, James,” answered his mother. “It is not best for you to be discouraged, after you have overcome so many obstacles.”

James did not tell his mother that if the Lord had anything better in store for him he would be obliged if He would make it known; but he thought so.

“You are tired enough to go to bed,” added his mother; “and to-morrow you can talk with your uncle Amos about it.”

Uncle Amos was their counsellor in all times of trial; and James accepted the suggestion as a kind of solace, and retired.

The next morning, before he was up, he heard a man call to his mother from the road.

“Widow Garfield!”

She responded by going to the door.

“Where’s your boy Jim?”

“He is at home. He is not up yet,” Mrs. Garfield replied, a little curious to know he wanted of James so early in the morning.

“I wonder if he’d like to keep our school at the Ledge this winter?” the man continued.

James bounded out of bed at the sound of the word school, beginning to think that Providence had sent an angel, in the shape of a man, to bring the “something better” which his mother told about. He stood face to face with the man in an incredibly brief period. The caller was a well-known neighbour, living only a mile away, and the school for which he wanted a teacher was not much farther than that.

“How is it, Jim? Will you keep our school at the Ledge this winter?” he inquired.