time he would succeed in working off his debt to the bank, dollar by dollar.  He had got his soul back out of the claws of despair that had nearly flown away with it.  There was no hope, but he could live without it because he must not only live himself, but keep his boy alive.  Somehow, he would get along on credit for a week or two, till he could get work.  At all events there were his tools to sell, and the Motor must go for old brass, bronze, iron, and steel.  He would see about selling the stuff the next day, and with what it would bring he could at least pay cash for necessaries, and the bank must wait.  There was no hope in that, but there was the plain sense of an honest man.  He was not a coward; he had only been brutally stunned, and now that he had recovered from the blow he would do his duty.  But an innocent man who walks steadily to endure an undeserved death is not a man that hopes for anything, and it was like death to Overholt to give up his invention.

The door opened and Newton came in quietly.  His face was flushed with the cold and his eyes were bright.  What was the weight of leaden care to the glorious main-spring of healthy thirteen?  Overholt was proud of his boy, nevertheless, for facing the dreary prospect of no Christmas so bravely.  Then he had a surprise.

“I’ve got a little money, father.  It’s not much, I know, but it’s something to go on with for a day or two.  There it is.”

Newton produced three well-worn dollar bills and some small change, which his father stared at in amazement.

“There’s three dollars and seventy cents,” he said.  “And you told me you had four or five dollars left.”

Before he sat down he piled the change neatly on the bills beside his father’s plate; then he took his seat, very red indeed and looking at the table-cloth.

“Where on earth did you get it?” asked Overholt, leaning back in his chair.

“Well”—­the boy hesitated and got redder still—­“I didn’t steal it, anyway,” he said.  “It’s mine all right.  I mean it’s yours.”

“Of course you didn’t steal it!” cried John Henry.  “But where did you get it?  You haven’t had more than a few cents at a time for weeks and weeks, so you can’t have saved it!”

“I didn’t beg it either,” Newton answered.

“Or borrow it, my boy?”

“No!  I wasn’t going to borrow money I couldn’t pay!  I’d rather not tell you, all the same, father!  At least, I earned twenty cents of it.  That’s the odd twenty, that makes the three seventy.  I don’t mind telling you that.”

“Oh, you earned twenty cents of it?  Well, I’m glad of that, anyhow.  What did you do?”

“I sort of hung round the depot till the train came in, and I carried a man’s valise across to the hotel for him.  He gave me ten cents.  Some of the boys do that, you know, but I thought you wouldn’t care to have me do it till I had to!”

“That’s all right.  It does you credit.  How about the other ten cents?”