Winning His Way | Page 8

rest.
It was a sad day to Paul when he followed the body of his dear old
grandfather to the grave; but when he stood by his coffin, and looked
for the last time upon his grandfather's face, and saw how peaceful it
was and how pleasant the smile which rested upon it, as if he was
beholding beautiful scenes,--when Paul remembered how good he was,
he could not feel it in his soul to say, "Come back, Grandpa"; he would
be content as it was. But the days were long and dreary, and so were the
nights. Many the hours which Paul passed lying awake in his bed,
looking through the crevices of the poor old house, and watching the
stars and the clouds as they went sailing by. So he was sailing on, and
the question would come up, Whither? He listened to the water falling
over the dam by the mill, and to the chirping of the crickets, and the
sighing of the wind, and the church-bell tolling the hours: they were
sweet, yet mournful and solemn sounds. Tears stood in his eyes and
rolled down his cheeks, as he thought that he and his mother were on
earth, and his father and grandfather were praising God in the heavenly
choirs. But he resolved to be good, to take care of his mother, and be
her comfort and joy.
Hard times came on. How to live was the great question; for now that
his grandfather was gone, they could have the pension no longer. The
neighbors were very kind. Sometimes Mr. Middlekauf, Hans's father,
who had a great farm, left a bag of meal for them when he came into
the village. There was little work for Paul to do in the village; but he

kept their own garden in good trim,--the onion-bed clear of weeds, and
the potatoes well hilled. Very pleasant it was to work there, where the
honey-bees hummed over the beds of sage, and among his mother's
flowers, and where bumble-bees dusted their yellow jackets in the
hollyhocks. Swallows also built their nests under the eaves of the house,
and made the days pleasant with their merry twittering.
The old Pensioner had been a land surveyor. The compass which he
used was a poor thing; but he had run many lines with it through the
grand old forest. One day, as Paul was weeding the onions, it occurred
to him that he might become a surveyor; so he went into the house,
took the compass from its case, and sat down to study it. He found his
grandfather's surveying-book, and began to study that. Some parts were
hard and dry; but having resolved to master it, he was not the boy to
give up a good resolution. It was not long before he found out how to
run a line, how to set off angles, and how to ascertain the distance
across a river or pond without measuring it. He went into the woods,
and stripped great rolls of birch bark from the trees, carried them home,
spread them out on the table, and plotted his lines with his dividers and
ruler. He could not afford paper. He took great pleasure in making a
sketch of the ground around the house, the garden, the orchard, the field,
the road, and the river.
The people of New Hope had long been discussing the project of
building a new road to Fairview, which would cross the pond above the
mill. But there was no surveyor in the region to tell them how long the
bridge must be which they would have to build.
"We will send up a kite, and thus get a string across the pond," said one
of the citizens.
"I can ascertain the distance easier than that," said Paul.
Mr. Pimpleberry, the carpenter, who was to build the bridge, laughed,
and looked with contempt upon him, Paul thought, because he was
barefoot and had a patch on each knee.
"Have you ever measured it, Paul?" Judge Adams asked.

"No, sir; but I will do so just to let Mr. Pimpleberry see that I can do
it."
He ran into the house, brought out the compass, went down to the edge
of the pond, drove a small stake in the ground, set his compass over it,
and sighted a small oak-tree upon the other side of the pond. It
happened that the tree was exactly south from the stake; then he turned
the sights of his compass so that they pointed exactly east and west.
Then he took Mr. Pimpleberry's ten-foot pole, and measured out fifty
feet toward the west, and drove another stake. Then he set his compass
there, and took another sight at the small oak-tree across the pond. It
was not south