and not a complaint.

CHARLIE IS DISCOURAGED.

A DARK EVENING.

HE was just discouraged, and that was the whole of it. He sat close to the stove, leaned his ragged elbow on his knee, and his cheek on a rather sooty hand, and gave himself up to troubled thought, the two books which had slipped from him, lying unheeded on the floor.

Let them lie there; what was the use in trying to study? Here was the third evening this week that he had been held, after hours, when he wanted to go to the night school and find out how to do that example! He might just as well give up first as last.

There was a loud stamping outside, and the door of the little flag station burst open, letting in a rush of spiteful winter air.

“Halloo!” said a boy of about fourteen, muffled to his eyes in fur.

“Halloo yourself,” said the boy by the stove, without changing his position more than was necessary to glance up.

“Has the six o’clock freight gone down yet?”

“Not as I know of; I wish she would be about it; I’ve been waiting on her now an hour after time.”

“Lucky for me she is behind, though; I guess I can catch a ride into town on her, can’t I? I’ve been out to Windmere, and missed the five o’clock mail; I set out to foot it, but it is rather rough walking against this wind; especially when you have to walk on ice. I’d rather be toted in on the freight, than to try it. Do you suppose they will give me a lift?”

“You can sit down and wait, and try for it, if you like,” and the boy glanced toward a three-legged stool.

“I’d give you this chair only it hasn’t any bottom,” he said, with a dreary attempt at a smile.

“The stool is all right. Do you have to wait every night for the freight?”

“No; not much oftener than every other night; it isn’t my business to wait at all, but as often as three times a week the fellow in charge wants me to do that, or something else, after I’m off duty.”

“So you fill up the time with reading; that’s a good idea. What have you here?”

The visitor stooped and picked up the fallen books.

“Arithmetic and History! You are studying, eh? Well, now, I call that industrious. Where do you go to school?”

“Nowhere. I pretend to go to the evening class at the Twenty-third Street Station, and sometimes I get there twice in the week, and sometimes only once. It’s a