trying to atone for some past mistake, which no eye but her
own could see.

Demi, like a true Yankee, was of an inquiring turn, wanting
to know everything, and often getting much disturbed because
he could not get satisfactory answers to his perpetual "What
for?"

He also possessed a philosophic bent, to the great delight of
his grandfather, who used to hold Socratic conversations with
him, in which the precocious pupil occasionally posed as his
teacher, to the undisguised satisfaction of the womenfolk.

"What makes my legs go, dranpa?" asked the young
philosopher, surveying those active portions of his frame with a
meditative air, while resting after a go-to-bed frolic one night.

"It's your little mind, Demi," replied the sage, stroking the
yellow head respectfully.

"What is a little mine?"

"It is something which makes your body move, as the spring
made the wheels go in my watch when I showed it to you."

"Open me; I want to see it go wound."

"I can't do that any more than you could open the watch.
God winds you up, and you go till He stops you."

"Does I?" and Demi's brown eyes grew big and bright as he
took in the new thought. "Is I wounded up like the watch?"

"Yes; but I can't show you how; for it is done when we
don't see."

Demi felt of his back, as if expecting to find it like that of
the watch, and then gravely remarked, --

"I dess Dod does it when I's asleep."

A careful explanation followed, to which he listened so
attentively that his anxious grandmother said, --

"My dear, do you think it wise to talk about such things to
that baby? He's getting great bumps over his eyes, and
learning to ask the most unanswerable questions."

"If he is old enough to ask the questions he is old enough
to receive true answers. I am not putting the thoughts into his
head, but helping him unfold those already there. These

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