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I do not know how long this strenuous employment claimed me, but I know that I was one day discharged suddenly without explanation. The only reason I can assign is that some of my petty pilferings of milk had been discovered, and the only excuse I can give is that of all my earnings I never had a halfpenny to call my own—it all went for my keep.

Why or how I went to my next place I shall never know. It is to me and always has been a profound mystery. It was at a "lath-render's," a place where laths were made by hand from curved fillets of Russian pine, with a groove down the centre as if showing whence the pith had been removed, that had often aroused my wonder as to their use. I was to receive, as far as I remember, small wages, and certainly no food, but I was to learn the business! But my only occupation while I was there was to tie up chips for sale and keep the fire going in the stove, although I watched the men splitting the long laths from the billets with a sort of hatchet with keenest interest. Ah, yes, I used to saw the billets into lengths, I remember, but not to any extent. I was too small for such strenuous labour.