250 THE LAND OF PLUCK

them from the white soldier would never leave them
again! that while they were busily shaping his_ body,
head, and arms to their satisfaction, he was quietly shaping
them, actually molding their careers!

Neither did haughty Milly Scott imagine, as she walked
by in her best clothes, that the snow-man would quite
change her ways of thinking and acting; nor did little
Ben, her brother, have any idea that the same shining
white soldier would make him a prisoner for six weeks—
not he. Yet these things all came to pass.

To-day, Sydney Burton (I do not give you his real
name) is a sculptor in Rome; his brother, Colonel William
Burton, is stationed somewhere on our Western frontier ;
Charley Green is soon to be made professor of chemistry
in one of our Northern colleges; and solemn Hal Mc-
Dougal is studying hard in the French Institute of Surgery.

As for Master Ben Scott and his sister Milly, perhaps
I should have told you about them sooner in the story.

Poor Milly! She was not a bad-hearted girl, but she
was very proud, and often blind to the feelings of others.
She cared more for her fine clothes, her fancy boots, her
wavy hair, than for anything else in the world, except
her mother and father and little Ben. She disliked plain,
unfashionable people exceedingly; and as for the really
poor and ragged, they seemed to her too disagreeable to
be thought of for an instant. She always avoided the
wretched places where they lived, and never seemed to
suspect that the little children whom Christ blessed were
not all dressed in fine garments.

On this particular day, she had seen a child tumble over