If Rebecca perchance, after painfully protracted exertions, succeeded in working out some simple problem in arithmetic, her slate containing the solution was freely handed about among her unaspiring comrades; so that I judged her to be "weakly generous" as well as "plodding,"—qualities not of a high order, I esteemed, yet by no means insuperable barriers to friendship when found to enter more or less largely into the composition of one's friends.

There was something in my novel relation to the girl as her teacher peculiarly fascinating to me. At recess she remained in her seat and kept quietly at her work.

I went down and stood over her. "Can I help you, my dear?" I said.

Whatever might have been the pedantic or obtrusively condescending quality of those words, Rebecca seemed to find nothing distasteful in them. She looked up with a "Thank you," and a pleased, trustful face like a child's. "I can't do this one," said she. "I've finished the rest, but this wouldn't come right, somehow."

It was a sum in simple addition. I could not help a feeling of deep surprise and commiseration that one of Rebecca's age should have stumbled at it at all, but I essayed to examine it very closely and worked it out for her as slowly as possible. "Do you see your mistake?" I said.

She blushed painfully. The tears almost stood in her eyes.

"Yes, and I knew you'd have to find out how dull I was," she said; "but I dreaded it. When Miss Waite was here, mother was sick and I didn't go to school at all, and Miss Waite took me for a friend; and I told mother I'd most rather not go to school to you, for Miss Waite said you'd be a real friend, and I knew you wouldn't want me when you found how dull I was."

I looked at the girl, and a bright, hesitating smile woke in her face.

"Do you know, Rebecca," I said, "I don't choose my friends for their mental qualifications—for what they know; I select them just as people do horses—by their teeth. Let me see yours."

Rebecca laughed most musically, thus disclosing two brilliant rows of ivories. I had noticed them before.

"You'll do!" I exclaimed, lightly. "I take you into my heart of hearts. Now, what is your standard of choice? What charming characteristic do you First require in a friend, Rebecca?"

"Oh!" said she, gasping a little and speaking very slowly; "I—don't—know. I—don't—think—I've got any."

"Don't be afraid lest you shall guess something that I have not, my dear," I said; "You can hardly go astray. Begin with modesty, if you please, truly the chief of virtues."

Rebecca caught quickly the meaning in my tone, and answered with a low ripple of laughter. When I urged her, she grew gravely embarrassed.

"Well," said she; "I don't think I should want anybody that I thought I couldn't ever help them any, you know. That wouldn't ever need me, I mean, and I know," she went on more hastily; "it seems funny to say that to you, because it seems as though there wasn't anything that I could ever do for you—because you—you seem—not to need anybody—but I didn't know but some time—there might be something—I thought—maybe—some time."

Rebecca paused and looked up at me with that pitifully beseeching expression in her eyes.

"Oh, yes," I answered, still carelessly; "no doubt I shall be a great burden to you in time. But you do help me now, dear, by your conduct in school. You helped me this morning when you boxed Lemuel Biddy's ears. I shall have to take boxing lessons of you."

"You be the scholar," Rebecca answered quickly, her lips parting again with a merry outburst of laughter.

"Wretch!" said I, well pleased but affecting a tone of deep severity; "you must not be saucy to your teacher! I shall keep you in the rest of your recess for that.

"Do you like to study, Rebecca?" I added presently.

"No-o," said she, much abashed at the admission, and yet evidently incapable of speaking otherwise than according to the simple dictates of her conscience. "I don't think I should care anything about it if it didn't make you so dull not to. I mean," she continued; "perhaps I might 'a' liked it if I'd been to school right along, but we never did. And I was to the mills up to Taunton. I didn't stay long there. Then mother was sick. They don't any of the scholars be let to go very regular. Sometimes they're wanted to work out. So they forget. So they don't care much, I think. They get to dreading it. I wanted to tell you so you wouldn't think it so much blame—our bein' so backward."

"It is the faithful improvement of what opportunities we have, Rebecca," I began and then paused, somewhat confused by the throng of lively reminiscences which suddenly crowded my mental horoscope. "You are young yet, my dear," I concluded gravely, with a resigned sigh for my own departed youth; "you can make up for lost time. It is pleasant to give, but there may be circumstances in which it is our duty imperatively to receive. You must let me do all I can for you this winter. I do want you for a friend, but I would rather it should be on these plainly implied conditions."

Rebecca had been studying my face, thoughtfully, with a still expression of wonder.

"I'll try to learn," said she, slowly. "I'll do anything you want me to."

"Do you like to read?" I inquired, in a brighter tone.

"Stories?" said Rebecca, a sparkle waking in her eyes.

"Stories mixed with other things," I insisted, gently; and was then compelled to wonder how many of those "other things" had found their way into the literary appointment of my trunk.

"I'll try," said Rebecca.

"Come to the Ark, after school, and look over the books I have. We will talk some more about it, and you shall select as you please, or I will select for you, if you desire," I said, looking at Rebecca with kindly though severe penetration.

"I'd rather you would," said Rebecca, obediently.

To inflict this particular sort of patronage was a delightfully new experience for me. The glaring inconsistencies which confronted me at every turn only gave a heightened zest to the pursuit.

When I went to the door to blow the horn I felt that Rebecca already regarded me as her patron, guide, and spiritual mentor, and I was seriously resolved to fill these positions hopefully for her and with credit to myself. With respect to the rest of my flock, I felt a different sort of interest—the wide-awake concern of one who finds himself suddenly perched on the back of a mettlesome, untried steed.

Any one member of that benighted corps, taken as the subject of pruning and cultivating effort, would have occupied, I believed, the faithful labors of a lifetime. Considered as a gloriously rampant mass, the aspect of the field was appalling.

I was especially impressed with this view of the case when I went to toot them in from those free and reckless diversions in, which their souls expanded and their bodies became as the winged creatures of the earth.

The horn was still an object of terror to me, though experience had made me wise enough to institute, on all occasions, a careful preliminary search for buttons.

Its blast, freighted with baleful meaning to the ears of sportive innocence, found a melancholy echo among the deeper woes of my own heart, and, if it chanced to be one of Aunt Lobelia's singing days, the "Dar' to be a Dan-yell! Dar' to be a Dan-yell!" which floated across the lane, had but a doubtfully inspiriting effect.

I felt, indeed, like a Daniel doomed to convocate my own lions, and lacking that faith in a preserving Providence which is believed to have cheered and elevated the spirit of the ancient prophet, I confidently expected, on the whole, to be devoured.

Gathered into their den, my lively herd gasped some moments as though suffering the last loud agony of expiring breath, and then, bethinking them of that only one of their free and native elements now obtainable, they sent up a universal cry for "water!"

Ah! what to do with them through the long hours of the day—beautiful creatures! by no means unlovable, with their bright, clear eyes, their restless, restless feet, their overflowing spirits; their bodies all alive, but with minds unfitted by birth, unskilled by domestic discipline, to any sort of earnest and prolonged effort. Long, weary hours, therefore, not of furnishing instruction to the hungry and inquiring mind—ah, no!—but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted school-room, tired, tired, tired!

The parents of the children "dropped in" often at the Ark, and savored the lively and varied flow of their discourse with choice dissertations on methods of discipline.

"I want my children whipped," said Mr. Randall Alden. "That's what they need. They git enough of it at home. It won't skeer 'em any—and I tell the folks if they'd all talk like that, they wouldn't be no trouble in the school."

"Ye can't drive Milton P.," said that hopeful's mother. "He's been drove so much that he don't take no notice of it. If coaxing won't fetch him, nothin' won't; and I tell 'em if they was all like that they wouldn't be no trouble in the school."

"Well," said Emily Gaskell, the matron of the painted house, a tall, angular woman, with the hectic of the orthodox Yankee consumption on her cheeks, and the orthodox Yankee twinkle in her eye; "ye can manage my boys whatever way ye please, teacher. I ain't pertickeler. They've been coaxed and they've been whipped, but they've always made out to mind by doin' pretty much as they was a mind to. They're smart boys, too," she added, with sincere pride; "but they don't take to larnin'. I never see sich boys. Ye can't git no larnin' into 'em no way. They'd rather be whipped than go to school. Sim had a man to work on our cranberry bog, and he found out that he was first-rate in 'rithmetic, this man was, and so Sim, says he,—I'll give ye the same ye git on the bog,' says he, 'to stay up to the house and larn my boys 'rithmetic,' says he; and the man, he tried it, and in the course of a day or two, he come around to Sim, and wanted to know if he couldn't go back to clarin' bog again."

Emily took in the broadly contemplative expression on Grandma Keeler's benign features, and then winked at me facetiously: "I tell 'em if they was all like that," said she; "and I guess they be, pretty much, they might as well be out o' doors as in, and less worryin' to the teacher."

It might have been the third day of my labors in Wallencamp that a man, having the appearance of a lame giant, entered the school-room, and advanced to meet me with an imposing dignity of mien. He held captive, with one powerful hand, a stubbornly speechless, violently struggling boy. I recognized the man as Godfrey Cradlebow, the handsome fiddler's father, and the boy was none other than the imp whose eyes, scorching and defiant now, had first sent mocking glances back at me while their light-limbed owner kicked out a jaunty rigadoon from under the encircling folds of his sacerdotal vestments.

"Miss Hungerford, I beg your pardon," said the elder Cradlebow, with a distinct, refined enunciation foreign to the native element of Wallencamp, whose ordinary locution had something of a Hoosier accent "After a good deal of trouble in catching him, I have finally succeeded in bringing you in this—a—this little dev"—he made an impressive pause, patted his fiery offspring on the head with fatherly dignity, and eyed him, at once doubtfully and reflectively.

I was interested in observing the aspect of the two faces.

"The little boy resembles you, I think," I said.

The lame man struck his cane down hard upon the floor and laughed immoderately.

"If you knew what I had in my mind to say!" he exclaimed—"ah! that was well put, well put!—though but dubiously complimentary, but dubiously so, I assure you, either to father or son!"

The idea still continuing to tickle him, he laughed more gently, beating a sympathetic tattoo with his cane on the floor.

"To pursue directly the cause of my intrusion here," he went on, at length, "this little—well, for present purposes, we will call him the Phenomenon. I confess it is a name to which he is not totally unused. This little phenomenon, whom you see before you, is the youngest but one in a flock of thirteen. Some of that beautiful band—" here Mr. Cradlebow raised a very shaky hand for an instant to his eyes, and although a fitting occasion for sentiment, I was compelled to think of what Grandpa Keeler had said about Godfrey Cradlebow's "sprees"—"some of that beautiful band rest in the graveyard, yonder. Some of them already know what it is themselves to be parents. Some of them still linger in the poor old home nest. I see you have here, my Alvin, and my Wallace, and my youngest, the infant Sophronia. Well, you find them good children, I dare say. Ah! they have an estimable mother." Again, he lifted his hand to his eyes. "Mischievous enough, you find them, probably, but amenable—there it is, amenable—but this lad"—Mr. Cradlebow paused again, shaking his head with a meaning to which he gravely declined further expression.

"What is your name?" I inquired of the little boy, hopefully.

"Simmy B.," he answered revengefully in a tone of alarming hoarseness.

"Such colds as that boy has!" exclaimed the paternal Cradlebow. "They're like all the rest of him—they're phenomenal. There are times when that boy appears to be nothing but one frightful, perambulating cold! Well," he sighed, "and yet it's a strange fact, that the more depraved and miserable a little devil is, the more his mother'll coddle him.

"Now there's this one and my Lute—Luther Larkin—a good boy, but lacking all capacity for rest—always lacking the capacity for rest—uneasy, both of them—always uneasy! but how the mother would give her own rest for them, and seem to love them the better for it! strange! They have always been her idols, too. Well, I have captured Simeon and brought him in. I hope you may keep him. The rest you must learn for yourself. The Lord help me!" he groaned, as he picked up his cane, with evident physical pain, and hobbled cut of the room.

Within the school-room, things resumed their customary, Niagara-like roar, until a lamentable voice rose above the others, and was straightway followed by another voice in indignant explanation.

"Teacher, can't Simmy B. stop? He's puttin' beans down Amber G.'s neck!"

"Simeon!" I exclaimed, in accents calculated to melt that youthful heart of stone, and then added; "I will speak with you a few moments alone, at recess."

Simeon looked no longer helplessly angry as when his father brought him in. He appeared, on the whole, well pleased, but I scanned his angelic features in vain for any trace of repentance.

There followed a few moments of comparative quiet. Then came a startling, sickening sound as of some one undergoing the tortures of strangulation. Then, a long, convulsive gasp. I looked down upon a sea of round eyes and uplifted hands.

"Teacher, Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil! Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil!"

"He's swallered most a whole one!" cried the owner of one pair of protruding orbs.

"It wa'n't!" retorted Simeon, flaming with righteous indignation—"It wa'n't but harf a one!"

"He t-t-told me," cried a young scion of the stammering Vickery race, all breathless with excitement, "that he was going to p-p-put it into his m-m-mouth and t-t-take it out of his n-n-nose, and he did and it t-t-t—and it slip-p-ped!"

"Wall, jest you keep your eyes peeled and your ears cocked," replied the sturdy Simeon, in hoarse and jarring accents; "and see if I don't take it out of my nose, yet."

The signs of that painful struggle slowly faded out of Simeon's face and there was an unusual calm in the school-room.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour elapsed. I was thoughtfully engaged in hearing one of my classes when startled by the sound of a window closed with a sharp bang. At the same time arose the universal voice:

"Simmy B.'s got out o' the winder! Simmy B.'s got out o' the winder!"

I looked out across the snowless fields, and there having already scaled two fences and put many a good rod between himself and the scene of his brief imprisonment, I beheld, borne as on the wings of the wind, the form of the retreating Simeon.

An incident at the close of my first week in Wallencamp was the visit of the "Turkey Mogul." Such was the name given by the Wallencampers to Mr. Baxter, the superintendent of schools.

Mr. Baxter lived many miles away in Farmouth, and was, properly, the visitor of the schools in Farmouth County. Wallencamp was not in Farmouth County. Nevertheless, Mr. Baxter had charge of the Wallencamp school. I had been informed that he drove over at the beginning and close of each term, put the scholars through the most "dreadful examins," and gave an indiscriminate "blowin' up" to persons and things in the place. So I looked forward to his coming with a curiosity not unmingled with more doubtful emotions.

It was Friday, and so near the close of the afternoon session that I had quite dismissed from my mind the contemplation of any dread advent for that day. It was just at that trying hour of Friday afternoon when only the spelling-classes remained to be heard, and teacher and scholars both were conscious, the one with a deep inward sense of relief, the others with many restless demonstrations of impatience, that the week was near its close; and that "to-morrow" would be Saturday and a holiday.

Estella the raven-haired—familiarly known as the "Modoc," a long and ungainly creature, with arms and legs so seemingly profuse and unmanageable, that they reminded one of the tentacles of a cuttle-fish—Estella was "passing around the water."

She was performing this accustomed office with a grin of such supreme delight and satisfaction as seemed actually to illuminate the back of her head, when the door of the school-room opened, and there, without any previous warning, appeared a grim, fierce-looking little man, whom I knew at once to be the "Turkey Mogul."

The extreme exigency of the case inspired me with a certain calmness of despair. Having advanced to meet this august personage, conducted him to the desk, and placed for him the official chair, which he shortly refused, I lifted my eyes, "prepared for any fate," to observe what might be the condition of my turbulent flock, and lo—all the tops, and Jews-harps, and apples, and whirligigs, and miniature buzz-saws had disappeared, and there was an array of pallid faces bent over another array of books—many of the latter were upside down, but the effect was unbroken. Even Estella, moved by some sudden divine sense of the fitness of things, had ceased her desultory wanderings about the room with the tin dipper, and, not having had time to procure a book, was working out imaginary problems on her fingers with the air of a Herschel, and I became slowly conscious that there was such a stillness in that room as had not been—no, nor anything like unto it,—since the first time I entered there.

I think Mr. Baxter must have observed something of the look of helpless astonishment which transfixed my features. I certainly saw the shadow of a smile lurking in his steel-gray eyes.

"Yes," he snarled, addressing the school; "yes, if I didn't know you, now, and if your books were not, most of 'em, bottom side up, and if I shouldn't be compelled in two minutes to prove the contrary, I might possibly imagine that you were studying—yes—humph!"

I said to Mr. Baxter, as cheerfully as possible, that "we were nearly through with our usual routine of classes for the day, but I should be happy, of course, to repeat any of the recitations which he might care to hear."

"Would you?" said he, looking at me not unpleasantly. "Do you really ask me to believe that? um-m-m," he murmured, resuming his stern aspect. "Let me see—Geography—yes, Miss Hungerford, you may call the first class in Geography."

I did not accuse the Superintendent of Schools of malevolent intentions, but I could honestly have affirmed that of all the divisions and subdivisions of my empire the first class in Geography was the one least calculated to shine on an occasion like the present.

I groaned inwardly, and called them forth. Their forlorn and wilted appearance as they formed in line went to my heart. I was resolved to defend them at whatever cost.

"Now," said Mr. Baxter, planting himself firmly, with his legs rather far apart, thrusting his hands in his pockets, and staring steadily at the shivering group from under his awful brows; "what is Geography? To begin with. That's the first thing. What is Geography?"

For a moment there was no reply. I almost began to hope that there would be none. I felt that here "Silence was golden," and if maintained, all might be comparatively well; when, to my dismay, there was a sort of flank movement in the ranks and the ill-starred Estella raised her hand.

"Well," said Mr. Baxter, pointing his finger steadfastly at her as if to impart a vein of concentration to her palpably loose and floating appearance; "You! You ought to know. What is Geography, eh?"

Some fair wreck of an idea, formerly appropriated in this connection, floated through the brain of the "Mo-doc." She opened her mouth and in those loud and startling accents, for which she was ever distinguished, gave utterance to these memorable words:

"A—round! like a ball!"

Mr. Baxter glared fiercely at her for a moment, and then permitted his scorn to escape in a long, sarcastic hiss.

"Yes-s-s," said he; "yes-s-s! around like a ball! Do you find it much in your way, eh? Do you often give it such a kick as that, eh? Well, take your seats! take your seats!"

The Superintendent of Schools seemed disinclined to evoke any further catastrophes of this sort, but proceeded to discourse to me, aside, in a confidential growl, on the peculiar and erratic natures of the benighted Wallencampers.

"Their minds," he said, with a grim smile, "have no receptivity. They must originate, or they are naught. Parents and children—they are all the same. I am convinced that there is no scholarship to be established here. It has been tried and the attempt has failed a hundred times. It's not in the nature of things. Get on the good side of them, that's all. That has failed sometimes, but it is not among the impossible things. Get on the good side of them."

Finally, he turned to address the children. The "examins" had certainly not been severe, but the "blowin' up" was faithfully and liberally performed.

Never before had I felt so drawn to my poor, wondering, wolf-besieged flock, and in proportion to my tenderness for them waxed my indignation toward the "Turkey Mogul."

"You can't learn," said he. "That's a sufficiently established fact, but if you don't behave, your teacher is going to write to me, mind! and I shall come down here in my buggy, and take you right up and off to Farmouth where we have a place to keep all such naughty boys and girls."

This last was evoked as a benediction. Mr. Baxter looked at his watch, and remarked that it was a long drive to Farmouth, and he must be going. "Dismiss your school, Miss Hungerford," he said.

Now the children were accustomed—it was a special privilege they had requested—to sing, before the school closed at night, one of the hymns with which they were all so familiar in Wallencamp.

I would have dismissed them, on this occasion, without further ceremony, but before I had time to tap my ruler on the desk as a signal for dismissal, they all struck up as with one voice:—

"What a friend we have in Jesus, All our griefs and woes to share! What a privilege to carry Everything to God in prayer."

At first I was a little amused at the incongruity of the thing. Then it began to seem to me inexpressibly touching.

The Superintendent of Schools stood with a cold, supercilious grin on his face, a stern, self-sufficient man, not one likely to echo the spirit of these simple words.

I stood beside him, weary and perplexed enough, but ever taking counsel of the pride of my own heart. And those poor children, with their hard, toilsome, barren lives before them, how they sang! their clear, young voices ringing out fearlessly, carelessly—they knew the words. I wondered if any one in the room appreciated the song as having inner truth and meaning.

As I was locking my desk, before leaving the room, I discovered this little note, which Rebecca had dropped in it.

"dere teecher,

"I wanted to do sumthyng to help yu wen I seen him come in To Day fur I new jus howe yu felt but thay wasent no wours than thay always was, and he nose it! and thay studdid more fur yu I think than thay did for any but I think it mus be harrd for yu not bein' use to us. I think yu was tired. When we was singin' I thot howe tired yu was, but thar' was always won to help. Excus writin' pleas but I wanted to let yu no for yu was good to me and I luv yu.

Becky Weir."

Somehow, the little note rested and comforted me, more than I would have imagined, a week before, any expression of this humble disciple of mine could have done.

I held the letter crumpled in my hand going up the lane. Going up the lane, too, I met Emily's fisherman coming gayly home from the river.

Mr. Rollin stopped, and gallantly requested the pleasure of carrying a small book which I held in my hand. He walked back to the Ark with me, talking very fluently the while.

"Do you know," he began; "I think I'm awfully fortunate meeting you here in the lane. I've been wishing for an opportunity to speak with you for two or three days past, but the Ark is such a popular resort for the youth of Wallencamp, and the children seem to be always following you. Well, they regard the school teacher as their special property, and would Consider me worse than an intruder if I should go in to take even the lowest seat in the synagogue. I've been wanting to speak with you ever since that first night—when I stared at you so stupidly at Captain Keeler's—when I went up to borrow the oars, and you were engaged, you remember," said Mr. Rollin, laughing gently, "in wresting particles of hulled corn from the ocean depths of that kettle."

"I remember," I said, trying to smother what annoyance I still felt at the recollection. "I admit that it was a very striking scene. It was very good," I added, religiously, referring to the corn. Mr. Rollin ought to know, I thought, that I had come to Wallencamp on a mission, and that if he wished to scoff at the ways of its defenceless inhabitants, he shouldn't look to find a confidante in me.

"The hulled corn? Oh! yes, indeed!" he answered with a sprightly air. "We have it served in the same way at Emily's, and we think it's just—a—rich, you know. But I wanted to tell you. If you could have known how confoundedly struck up I was when I went into the Ark that night, you wouldn't think it so strange my standing staring there like a fool. You see we fellows, picking up everything of interest down here to amuse ourselves with, heard that there was a new school-teacher coming, so we gave our imaginations free rein. We were laughing it over among ourselves, and Smith said, 'she'd probably have hair like Rollin's,' and Jake said 'she'd wear spectacles, and have a nose like the Clipper in the Three Fates', and all that sort of thing. So I went up that night to see, just for the deuce of it, and not to get the oars at all, and I was deucedly well paid for it, too. In fact, Miss Hungerford," said the fisherman, darting a keen glance at me from his laughing eyes, "I did go up to scoff, but I remained to pray."

My ears had never been conscientiously closed to the voice of idle praise, but with this, for some reason, I was not well pleased.

"Your attitude was certainly devotional," I answered, without haste. "Your friend," I added, "must be something of a seer. Here are the literal glasses!"

"Nonsense!" said Mr. Rollin, coloring slightly; "you know I didn't mean that—just being a little near-sighted. I said spectacles. Besides," and the fisherman looked me full and unblushingly in the face—"if I had such eyes as yours, by Jove, I wouldn't mind whether I could see anything out of 'em or not!"

"You will hardly expect me to thank you for that," I murmured, with a sincere flash of indignation; not that I was unmindful of certain reckless moods of old, when I had found it not impossible to listen, even with calmness, to vain demonstrations of this sort, but I felt that I was a different person now, in a different sphere of action.

Mr. Rollin knew nothing of me except that I was the teacher of the Wallencamp school—a doubtful position to his mind.

He fancied that he might "pick me up," to "amuse" himself with, I thought, and at the reflection I felt an angry glow rising from heart to cheek.

Meanwhile the fisherman gnawed his moustache ruefully. This idle worldling could assume, occasionally, a whimsical helplessness of expression, with an air of aggrieved and childlike candor, somewhat baffling to the stern designs of justice.

"Now I've offended you," he began, exchanging his tone of easy nonchalance for one of slow and awkward dejection. "And you think I've had the impudence—well, if either one of us two is going to be taken in, Miss Hungerford, I can tell you it's a blamed sight more likely to be me; but you're prejudiced against me, I can see. You were prejudiced against me that first night. I know how those old women talk. They've got an idea, somehow, that I'm a scapegrace, and a desperate character. And, on my word, Miss Hungerford, I'm considered a real model chap there at home, and make speeches to the little boys and girls in Sunday School, and all that sort of thing. On my word, I do."

Mr. Rollin spoke quite warmly. I could not help laughing at his droll self-vindication.

"I should like to ask you to speak to my little boys and girls!" I said; "but it's too harrowing to the feelings. I listened to one address this afternoon."

"The 'Turkey Mogul?' Oh, that isn't my style!" said Mr. Rollin. "I don't sear their young vision with the prospect of eternal flames. I entice them with the blandishments of future reward. Let me go in some day, and I promise you in one brief half hour to destroy the cankering effect of all that the 'Turkey Mogul' has ever said. At least, I shall serve as an antidote—a cheerful and allaying antidote to the wormwood of censorious criticism."

Thus the voluble fisherman ran on, with an air of simple and charming ingenuousness; while I reflected that here possibly was a light and aimless creature whom I had mentally convicted of ungracious designs, that, although his presence in Wallencamp, as a representative of the great world I believed I had left behind me, was rather mal a propos, it might be that I ought to consider him providentially included in my field of labor, and as one of the objects of my regenerating care.

Whether Mr. Rollin detected anything of this philanthropic intention I do not know. When we got to the gate he said:—

"Will you go with me for a drive to-morrow, Miss Hungerford? You know what the Wallencamp equipages are. They furnish entertainment, at all events. The drive to West Wallen is really beautiful—even at this season of the year, with such uncommonly fine weather, and you have a holiday, and the mail hasn't been brought from West Wallen for nearly a week."

I thanked the fisherman almost eagerly, thinking, at that instant, of the longed-for letters that I knew were waiting for me in the West Wallen Post Office.

Then, suddenly, I felt Rebecca's little note grow heavy in my hand.

To act voluntarily for others—to consider as serious any obstacles in the way of following out my personal inclinations—these were experiences too new to me, and my resolve was not a natural one, but forced and impatient.

"You are very kind," I said; "but I can't go to-morrow."

The two little Keelers came running out of the Ark to meet me. I was secretly relieved. Mr. Rollin had been watching me narrowly; his lips curled, and his eyes flashed with a half angry, half scornful light. He cast an unloving glance at the little Keelers.

"I can't, of course, question the justice of your decision," he said shortly, and touched his hat and walked away without another word.

I considered this as one of the least among my many trials and perplexities. Oftentimes I sighed for the light-hearted, "irresponsible" days of yore, when "missions" were, as yet, to me unknown.

School was the greatest perplexity. Grandma Keeler's tenderness grew more impressive each day.

"It seems to me you're a growin' bleak and holler-eyed, teacher," she would say to me when I came home at night.

So I indulged more and more in a deeply sentimental self-pity, and felt a growing satisfaction in the consciousness that I was enduring martyrdom. It was more by reason of a stubborn and desperate pride, I think, than from higher motives, that, in my letters home, I said nothing of the discomforts and discouragements which attended my course. I chose to dilate on the beautiful scenery of Wallencamp, and the quaint originality of its inhabitants.



CHAPTER V.

GRANDMA KEELER GETS GRANDPA READY FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL.

Sunday morning nothing arose in Wallencamp save the sun.

At least, that celestial orb had long forgotten all the roseate flaming of his youth, in an honest, straightforward march through the heavens, ere the first signs of smoke came curling lazily up from the Wallencamp chimneys.

I had retired at night, very weary, with the delicious consciousness that it wouldn't make any difference when I woke up the next morning, or whether, indeed. I woke at all. So I opened my eyes leisurely and lay half-dreaming, half-meditating on a variety of things.

I deciphered a few of the texts on the scriptural patch-work quilt which covered my couch. There were—"Let not your heart be troubled," "Remember Lot's wife," and "Philander Keeler," traced in inky hieroglyphics, all in close conjunction.

Finally, I reached out for my watch, and, having ascertained the time of day, I got up and proceeded to dress hastily enough, wondering to hear no signs of life in the house.

I went noiselessly down the stairs. All was silent below, except for the peaceful snoring of Mrs. Philander and the little Keelers, which was responded to from some remote western corner of the Ark by the triumphant snores of Grandma and Grandpa Keeler.

I attempted to kindle a fire in the stove, but it sizzled a little while, spitefully, as much as to say, "What, Sunday morning? Not I!" and went out. So I concluded to put on some wraps and go out and warm myself in the sun.

I climbed the long hill back of the Ark, descended, and walked along the bank of the river. It was a beautiful morning. The air was—everything that could be desired in the way of air, but I felt a desperate need of something more substantial.

Standing alone with nature, on the bank of the lovely liver, I thought, with tears in my eyes, of the delicious breakfast already recuperating the exhausted energies of my far-away home friends.

When I got back to the house, Mrs. Philander, in simple and unaffected attire, was bustling busily about the stove.

The snores from Grandma and Grandpa's quarter had ceased, signifying that they, also, had advanced a stage in the grand processes of Sunday morning.

The children came teasing me to dress them, so I fastened for them a variety of small articles which I flattered myself on having combined in a very ingenious and artistic manner, though I believe those infant Keelers went weeping to Grandma afterwards, and were remodeled by her all-comforting hand with much skill and patience.

In the midst of her preparations for breakfast, Madeline abruptly assumed her hat and shawl, and was seen from the window, walking leisurely across the fields in the direction of the woods. She returned in due time, bearing an armful of fresh evergreens, which she twisted around the family register.

When the ancient couple made their appearance, I remarked silently, in regard to Grandma Keeler's hair, what proved afterward to be its usual holiday morning arrangement. It was confined in six infinitesimal braids which appeared to be sprouting out, perpendicularly, in all directions from her head. The effect of redundancy and expansiveness thus heightened and increased on Grandma's features was striking in the extreme.

While we were eating breakfast, that good soul observed to Grandpa Keeler: "Wall, pa, I suppose you'll be all ready when the time comes to take teacher and me over to West Wallen to Sunday school, won't ye?"

Grandpa coughed, and coughed again, and raised his eyes helplessly to the window.

"Looks some like showers," said he. "A-hem! ahem! Looks mightily to me like showers, over yonder."

"Thar', r'aly, husband! I must say I feel mortified for ye," said Grandma. "Seein' as you're a professor, too, and thar' ain't been a single Sunday mornin' since I've lived with ye, pa, summer or winter, but what you've seen showers, and it r'aly seems to me it's dreadful inconsistent when thar' ain't no cloud in the sky, and don't look no more like rain than I do." And Grandma's face, in spite of her reproachful tones, was, above all, blandly sunlike and expressive of anything rather than deluge and watery disaster.

Grandpa was silent a little while, then coughed again I had never seen Grandpa in worse straits.

"A-hem! a-hem! 'Fanny' seems to be a little lame, this mornin'," said he. "I shouldn't wonder. She's been goin' pretty stiddy this week."

"It does beat all, pa," continued Grandma Keeler, "how't all the horses you've ever had since I've known ye have always been took lame Sunday mornin'. Thar' was 'Happy Jack,' he could go anywhers through the week, and never limp a step, as nobody could see, and Sunday mornin' he was always took lame! And thar' was 'Tantrum'——"

"Tantrum" was the horse that had run away with Grandma when she was thrown from the wagon, and generally smashed to pieces. And now, Grandma branched off into the thrilling reminiscences connected with this incident of her life, which was the third time during the week that the horrible tale had been repeated for my delectation.

When she had finished, Grandpa shook his head with painful earnestness, reverting to the former subject of discussion.

"It's a long jaunt!" said he; "a long jaunt!"

"Thar's a long hill to climb before we reach Zion's mount," said Grandma Keeler, impressively.

"Wall, there's a darned sight harder one on the road to West Wallen!" burst out the old sea-captain desperately; "say nothin' about the devilish stones!"

"Thar' now," said Grandma, with calm though awful reproof; "I think we've gone fur enough for one day; we've broke the Sabbath, and took the name of the Lord in vain, and that ought to be enough for perfessors."

Grandpa replied at length in a greatly subdued tone: "Wall, if you and the teacher want to go over to Sunday school to-day, I suppose we can go if we get ready," a long submissive sigh—"I suppose we can."

"They have preachin' service in the mornin', I suppose," said Grandma. "But we don't generally git along to that. It makes such an early start. We generally try to get around, when we go, in time for Sunday school. They have singin' and all. It's just about as interestin', I think, as preachin'. The old man ra'ly likes it," she observed aside to me; "when he once gets started, but he kind o' dreads the gittin' started."

When I beheld the ordeal through which Grandpa Keeler was called to pass, at the hands of his faithful consort, before he was considered in a fit condition of mind and body to embark for the sanctuary, I marvelled not at the old man's reluctance, nor that he had indeed seen clouds and tempest fringing the horizon.

Immediately after breakfast, he set out for the barn, ostensibly to "see to the chores;" really, I believe, to obtain a few moments' respite, before worse evil should come upon him.

Pretty soon Grandma was at the back door calling in firm though persuasive tones:—

"Husband! husband! come in, now, and get ready."

No answer. Then it was in another key, weighty, yet expressive of no weak irritation, that Grandma called "Come, pa! pa-a! pa-a-a!" Still no answer.

Then that voice of Grandma's sung out like a trumpet, terrible with meaning—"Bijonah Keeler!"

But Grandpa appeared not. Next, I saw Grandma slowly but surely gravitating in the direction of the barn, and soon she returned, bringing with her that ancient delinquent, who looked like a lost sheep indeed and a truly unreconciled one.

"Now the first thing," said Grandma, looking her forlorn captive over; "is boots. Go and get on yer meetin' gaiters, pa."

The old gentleman, having invested himself with those sacred relics, came pathetically limping into the room.

"I declare, ma," said he; "somehow these things—phew! Somehow they pinch my feet dreadfully. I don't know what it is,—phew! They're dreadful oncomf'table things somehow."

"Since I've known ye, pa," solemnly ejaculated Grandma Keeler, "you've never had a pair o' meetin' boots that set easy on yer feet. You'd ought to get boots big enough for ye, pa," she continued looking down disapprovingly on the old gentleman's pedal extremities, which resembled two small scows at anchor in black cloth encasements: "and not be so proud as to go to pinchin' yer feet into gaiters a number o' sizes too small for ye."

"They're number tens, I tell ye!" roared Grandpa nettled outrageously by this cutting taunt.

"Wall, thar', now, pa," said Grandma, soothingly; "if I had sech feet as that, I wouldn't go to spreadin' it all over town, if I was you—but it's time we stopped bickerin' now, husband, and got ready for meetin'; so set down and let me wash yer head."

"I've washed once this mornin'. It's clean enough," Grandpa protested, but in vain. He was planted in a chair, and Grandma Keeler, with rag and soap and a basin of water, attacked the old gentleman vigorously, much as I have seen cruel mothers wash the faces of their earth-begrimed infants. He only gave expression to such groans as:—

"Thar', ma! don't tear my ears to pieces! Come, ma! you've got my eyes so full o' soap now, ma, that I can't see nothin'. Phew! Lordy! ain't ye most through with this, ma?"

Then came the dyeing process, which Grandma Keeler assured me, aside, made Grandpa "look like a man o' thirty;" but to me, after it he looked neither old nor young, human nor inhuman, nor like anything that I had ever seen before under the sun.

"There's the lotion, the potion, the dye-er, and the setter," said Grandma, pointing to four bottles on the table. "Now whar's the directions, Madeline?"

These having been produced from between the leaves of the family Bible, Madeline read, while Grandma made a vigorous practical application of the various mixtures.

"This admirable lotion"—in soft ecstatic tones Madeline rehearsed the flowery language of the recipe—"though not so instantaneously startling in its effect as our inestimable dyer and setter, yet forms a most essential part of the whole process, opening, as it does, the dry and lifeless pores of the scalp, imparting to them new life and beauty, and rendering them more easily susceptible to the applications which follow. But we must go deeper than this; a tone must be given to the whole system by means of the cleansing and rejuvenating of the very centre of our beings, and, for this purpose, we have prepared our wonderful potion." Here Grandpa, with a wry face, was made to swallow a spoonful of the mixture. "Our unparalleled dyer," Madeline continued, "restores black hair to a more than original gloss and brilliancy, and gives to the faded golden tress the sunny flashes of youth." Grandpa was dyed. "Our world-renowned setter completes and perfects the whole process by adding tone and permanency to the efficacious qualities of the lotion, potion, and dyer, etc.;" while on Grandpa's head the unutterable dye was set.

"Now, read teacher some of the testimonials, daughter," said Grandma Keeler, whose face was one broad, generous illustration of that rare and peculiar virtue called faith.

So Madeline continued: "Mrs. Hiram Briggs, or North Dedham, writes: 'I was terribly afflicted with baldness, so that, for months, I was little more than an outcast from society, and an object of pity to my most familiar friends. I tried every remedy in vain. At length I heard of your wonderful restorative. After a week's application, my hair had already begun to grow in what seemed the most miraculous manner. At the end of ten months, it had assumed such length and proportions as to be a most luxurious burden, and where I had before been regarded with pity and aversion, I became the envied and admired of all beholders."

"Just think!" said Grandma Keeler, with rapturous sympathy and gratitude, "how that poor creetur must a' felt!"

"'Orion Spaulding of Weedsville, Vermont,'" Madeline went on—but, here, I had to beg to be excused, and went to my room to get ready for the Sunday school.

When I came down again, Grandpa Keeler was seated, completely arrayed in his best clothes, opposite Grandma, who held the big family Bible in her lap, and a Sunday-school question book in one hand.

"Now, pa," said she; "what tribe was it in sacred writ that wore bunnits?"

I was compelled to infer from the tone of Grandpa Keeler's answer that his temper had not undergone a mollifying process during my absence.

"Come, ma," said he; "how much longer ye goin' to pester me in this way?"

"Why, pa," Grandma rejoined calmly; "until you git a proper understandin' of it. What tribe was it in sacred writ that wore bunnits?"

"Lordy!" exclaimed the old man. "How d'ye suppose I know! They must'a' been a tarnal old womanish lookin' set any way."

"The tribe o' Judah, pa," said Grandma, gravely. "Now, how good it is, husband, to have your understandin' all freshened up on the scripters!"

"Come, come, ma!" said Grandpa, rising nervously, "It's time we was startin'. When I make up my mind to go anywhere I always want to git there in time. If I was goin' to the Old Harry, I should want to git there in time."

"It's my consarn that we shall git thar' before time, some on us," said Grandma, with sad meaning, "unless we larn to use more respec'ful language."

I shall never forget how we set off for church that Sabbath morning, way out at one of the sunny back doors of the Ark: for there was Madeline's little cottage that fronted the highway, or lane, and then there was a long backward extension of the Ark, only one story in height. This belonged peculiarly to Grandma and Grandpa Keeler. It contained the "parlor" and three "keepin'" rooms opening one into the other, all of the same size and general bare and gloomy appearance, all possessing the same sacredly preserved atmosphere, through which we passed with becoming silence and solemnity into the "end" room, the sunny kitchen where Grandma and Grandpa kept house by themselves in the summer time, and there at the door, her very yellow coat reflecting the rays of the sun, stood Fanny, presenting about as much appearance of life and animation as a pensive summer squash.

The carriage, I thought, was a fac-simile of the one in which I had been brought from West Wallen on the night of my arrival. One of the most striking peculiarities of this sort of vehicle was the width at which the wheels were set apart. The body seemed comparatively narrow. It was very long, and covered with white canvas. It had neither windows nor doors, but just the one guarded opening in front. There were no steps leading to this, and, indeed, a variety of obstacles before it. And the way Grandma effected an entrance was to put a chair on a mound of earth, and a cricket on top of the chair, and thus, having climbed up to Fanny's reposeful back, she slipped passively down, feet foremost, to the whiffle-tree; from thence she easily gained the plane of the carriage floor.

Grandpa and I took a less circuitous, though, perhaps, not less difficult route.

I sat with Grandpa on the "front" seat—it may be remarked that the "front" seat was very much front, and the "back" seat very much back—there was a kind of wooden shelf built outside as a resting-place for the feet, so that while our heads were under cover, our feet were out, utterly exposed to the weather, and we must either lay them on the shelf or let them hang off into space.

Madeline and the children stood at the door to see us off.

"All aboard! ship ballasted! wind fa'r! go ahead, thar', Fanny!" shouted Grandpa, who seemed quite restored in spirits, and held the reins and wielded the whip with a masterful air.

He spun sea-yarns, too, all the way—marvellous ones, and Grandma's reproving voice was mellowed by the distance, and so confusedly mingled with the rumbling of the wheels, that it seemed hardly to reach him at all. Not that Grandma looked discomfited on this account, or in bad humor. On the contrary, as she sat back there in the ghostly shadows, with her hands folded, and her hair combed out in resplendent waves on either side of her head, she appeared conscious that every word she uttered was taking root in some obdurate heart. She was, in every respect, the picture of good-will and contentment.

But the face under Grandpa's antiquated beaver began to give me a fresh shock every time I looked up at him, for the light and air were rapidly turning his rejuvenated locks and his poor, thin fringe of whiskers to an unnatural greenish tint, while his bushy eyebrows, untouched by the hand of art, shone as white as ever.

In spite of the old sea-captain's entertaining stories, it seemed, indeed, "a long jaunt" to West Wallen.

To say that Fanny was a slow horse would be but a feeble expression of the truth.

A persevering "click! click! click!" began to arise from Grandma's quarter. This annoyed Grandpa exceedingly.

"Shet up, ma!" he was moved to exclaim at last. "I'm steerin' this craft."

"Click! click! click!" came perseveringly from behind.

"Dum it, ma! thar', ma!" cried Grandpa, exasperated beyond measure. "How is this hoss goin' to hear anything that I say ef you keep up such a tarnal cacklin'?"

Just as we were coming out of the thickest part of the woods, about a mile beyond Wallencamp, we discovered a man walking in the distance. It was the only human being we had seen since we started.

"Hullo, there's Lovell!" exclaimed Grandpa. "I was wonderin' why we hadn't overtook him before. We gin'ally take him in on the road. Yis, yis; that's Lovell, ain't it, teacher?"

I put up my glasses, helplessly.

"I'm sure," I said, "I can't tell, positively. I have seen Mr. Barlow but once, and at that distance I shouldn't know my own father."

"Must be Lovell," said Grandpa. "Yis, I know him! Hullo, thar'! Ship ahoy! ship ahoy!"

Grandpa's voice suggested something of the fire and vigor it must have had when it rang out across the foam of waves and pierced the tempest's roar.

The man turned and looked at us, and then went on again.

"He don't seem to recognize us," said Grandma.

"Ship a-hoy! Ship a-hoy!" shouted Grandpa.

The man turned and looked at us again, and this time he stopped and kept on looking.

When we got up to him we saw that it wasn't Lovell Barlow at all, but a stranger of trampish appearance, drunk and fiery, and fixed in an aggressive attitude.

I was naturally terrified. What if he should attack us in that lonely spot! Grandpa was so old! And moreover, Grandpa was so taken aback to find that it wasn't Lovell that he began some blunt and stammering expression of surprise, which only served to increase the stranger's ire. Grandma, imperturbable soul! Who never failed to come to the rescue even in the most desperate emergencies—Grandma climbed over to the front, thrust out her benign head, and said in that deep, calm voice of hers:—

"We're a goin' to the house of God, brother; won't you git in and go too?"

"No!" our brother replied, doubling up his fists and shaking them menacingly in our faces: "I won't go to no house o' God. What d'ye mean by overhauling me on the road, and askin' me to git into yer d——d old travelling lunatic asylum?"

"Drive on, pa," said Grandma, coldly: "He ain't in no condition to be labored with now. Drive on kind o' quick!"

'Kind o' quick' we could not go, but Fanny was made to do her best, and we did not pause to look behind.

When we got to the church, Sunday-school had already begun. There was Lovell Barlow looking preternaturally stiff in his best clothes, sitting with a class of young men. He saw us when we came in, and gave me a look of deep meaning. It was the same expression—as though there was some solemn, mutual understanding between us—which he had worn on that night when he gave me his picture.

"There's plenty of young folks' classes," said Grandma; "but seein' as we're late maybe you'd jest as soon go right along in with us."

I said that I should like that best, so I went into the "old folks'" class with Grandma and Grandpa Keeler.

There were three pews of old people in front of us, and the teacher, who certainly seemed to me the oldest person I had ever seen, sat in an otherwise vacant pew in front of all, so that, his voice being very thin and querulous, we could hear very little that he said, although we were edified in some faint sense by his pious manner of shaking his head and rolling his eyes toward the ceiling.

The church was a square wooden edifice, of medium size, and contained three stoves all burning brightly. Against this, and the drowsy effect of their long drive in the sun and wind, my two companions proved powerless to struggle.

Grandpa looked furtively up at Grandma, then endeavored to put on as a sort of apology for what he felt was inevitably coming, a sanctimonious expression which was most unnatural to him, and which soon faded away as the sweet unconsciousness of slumber overspread his features. His head fell back helplessly, his mouth opened wide. He snored, but not very loudly. I looked at Grandma, wondering why her vigilance had failed on this occasion, and lo! her head was falling peacefully from side to side. She was fast asleep, too. She woke up first, however, and then Grandpa was speedily and adroitly aroused by some means, I think it was a pin; and Grandma fed him with bits of unsweetened flag-root which he munched penitently, though evidently without relish, until he dropped off to sleep again, and she dropped off to sleep again, and so they continued.

But it always happened that Grandma woke up first. And whereas Grandpa, when the avenging pin pierced his shins, recovered himself with a start and an air of guilty confusion, Grandma opened her eyes at regular intervals, with the utmost calm and placidity, as though she had merely been closing them to engage in a few moments of silent prayer.

Our class occupied an humble place in the sanctuary, near the door. Behind the pew in which Grandma, Grandpa, and I were sitting there was one more vacant. Presently the door opened, admitting a delightful waft of fresh air, and some one entered that pew, and bowed his head forward on the desk in a devotional attitude.

After the brief excitement caused by the advent of this new and very late comer had subsided, the Sunday-school resumed its former lethargic condition, and then I heard my own name whispered very softly in my ear.

I had to turn my head but a little to meet the deprecating, though evidently irreverent eyes of Emily's fisherman.

"How do you do, Miss Hungerford?" he murmured brightly. "Please don't consider me in the light of an intruder. I know I'm rather young for the class, to which you are admitted by reason of some extraordinary acquaintance with biblical lore."

"But it's an excellent opportunity for you to address the little boys and girls," I said.

"Nonsense!" said Mr. Rollin, reddening. "I only meant that for a joke, you know."

Without pausing to reflect at all on the moral consequences of the act, I welcomed the appearance of this voluble, fashionably-dressed young man among the "ancient and fish-like" odors of the West Wallen meeting-house with a positive sense of relief.

"If I might venture to suppose," Mr. Rollin continued, whispering, "that I came here to-day clothed, in any sense, as an angel of light—and, indeed, I feel a good deal like that sort of thing to-day—so sweet are the solaces of an approving conscience, and the consciousness of having resisted temptation. You see I was—yes, I was going fishing this morning, but I saw Captain Keeler go by to church—observe, too, the beauty of setting a good example—and I persuaded myself that it was wrong to go fishing on Sunday, and so I concluded to come to church, too."

At the light mockery of the fisherman's tone, the bolder flattery of his eyes, I felt the same quick flash of resentment that his words had occasioned when he walked with me up the lane. I turned my head away with the noble resolve to keep it there persistently.

Then I heard the whisper, "Miss Hungerford, you are driving me to the last extreme of idol worship. I shall, keep on addressing my petitions to that ostrich tip in your hat until you give me, at least, the benefit of your profile."

"I don't see why you should say such irreverent things to me, Mr. Rollin," I said, quite seriously, turning, and looking him full in the face, for an instant.

"Heaven forbid!" he replied, in an almost inaudible tone. "And if I could have conceived of such a thing, I would beg your pardon. You have brothers, Miss Hungerford?"

"Yes," I answered, nodding my head slightly, with my eyes fixed steadfastly on the ancient instructor of our class.

"How would you feel if your brother was off, alone, in some wild country, in need of good and gentle influences, and some young lady should treat him as you are treating me? Please turn your head a little this way. But, on the whole, I'm very glad I'm not your brother. Shall I tell you Why? Miss Hungerford," the fisherman continued, after a pause, "do you know I've always heard that auburn-haired people come, by right, into possession of the worst tempers. Your hair is brown—dark brown, and mine is red, almost—don't you think so?—and yet my mind is all peace within, and hope, and joy, and

'What is the blooming tincture of the skin, To peace of mind and purity, within?'

Miss Hungerford, it has been full two minutes, by my watch, since I caught the last beam from your eye. Let us forget the idle wranglings of the hour, and compose our minds to the great subjects which agitate eternity. One of those insects which infest ancient church edifices has been hovering about Captain Keeler's mouth. It has been drawn in. It has disappeared. Such are we, hovering on the vortex of eternity. How calm and undisturbed the old captain's face! how utterly unconscious of the tragedy just enacted! So eternity swallows us and leaves no trace behind, and no ripple marks its surface. How infer—how more than odd the old captain looks, anyway! I say, she ought to have touched up his eyebrows a little, you know, while she was at the nefarious business, Miss Hungerford."

"Yes," I answered, listening deliberately.

"Do you suppose that the time will ever come when she to whom I once gave the love of my young heart, and all that sort of thing, you know, will take me in hand, and dye my hair, and rig me up, and make such an infernal-looking old guy of me?"

"I don't see how you can escape," I said. "But you won't care so much, then."

"No, that's true." Mr. Rollin sighed deeply "I shall be old, then;—

'When I am old, I shall not care To deck with flowers my faded hair.'"

The idea of Mr. Rollin decking his hair with flowers was a specially entertaining one to me.

Presently, he continued:—

"To descend for a moment to secular subjects—I've got my own horses here now, Miss Hungerford. I had my man Bob bring them down from Providence. They got here last night, and they're a pair of spankers, too, if I do say it that shouldn't, as the phrase is. That was one of the inducements which led me to follow your—to follow Captain Keeler's example in coming to church this morning. And now I have a calm, serious, and reasonable proposal to make. No doubt we are both familiar with the small conventionalities of life, but on such a day as this, and with such a glorious air outside, and such a unique framework of society—everything delightfully pagan—scruples worthy only of small consideration at any time should be thrown aside. I don't know what perils you encountered on your way to church this morning, in the canvas-covered vehicle. But, if you will drive back to Wallencamp with me, I promise to take you there fleetly and safely, and you may have the consciousness, besides, if you care for it, that you have made the day one of spiritual reclamation to an erring fellow-creature."



The Sunday-school had risen to its feet and was slowly droning "Yield not to temptation," etc. The situation was odd enough. Mr. Rollin's repressed laughing voice was in my ear: "Will you yield?" and I yielded.

At the close of the Sunday-school, as we were going out of the church, I told Grandma that I should drive home with Emily's fisherman.

She drew me gravely to one side. "We shall be very sorry to lose your company, teacher," she said; "only we hadn't ought to lose no precious opportunity, and I do hope as you'll labor for that young man's soul." I felt hopelessly conscience-stricken.

We drove home through "Lost Cedars"—a good many miles out of the ordinary course—and I was cheerfully consenting to the divergence.

Wild and tenantless, in the midst of a wild and tenantless landscape, Lost Cedars wore that air of lovely, though utter, desolation which might easily have suggested its name.

There was a still unfrozen lake, which the setting sun, more like the sun of an Italian winter than of rugged New England, was painting in gorgeous colors, when we reached the place.

"We come fishing here, sometimes," said Mr. Rollin; "I keep a little boat down there under the bush, and I happen to have the key of the boat here in my pocket. It looks awfully tempting, doesn't it?"

I had always been passionately fond of out-door life, and prided myself in having acquired no little skill at the oar. We were out on the painted lake, and I was rowing the light boat, and taking much selfish enjoyment out of the scene around me, when I became conscious that the fisherman was leaning far forward from his seat in the boat, addressing me in a low tone.

"To discuss a topic appropriate to the day, Miss Hungerford: I suppose you've read about that fellow who was looking for the pearl of great price, haven't you?—that is, as I take it, you know, it was something that was going to be of more value to him than anything else in the world,—well, now, I believe that every man thinks he's going to be lucky enough to fall in with something of that sort some day, don't you?"

Mr. Rollin's tone was unusually serious and even slightly embarrassed. I looked up with curious surprise from my dreamy observation of the water. Then I thought of what Grandma Keeler had said to me about laboring for this young man's spiritual good.

"I think we all ought to seek it," I observed tritely, giving a long, studied artistic stroke to the oars. "I don't see why you shouldn't find it, I'm sure—if you ask. I wish that I were good enough to talk to you real helpfully on this subject."

I was startled at the inspiriting effect my brief exhortation seemed already to have produced on the soul of Emily's fisherman.

"To ask! Is that all!" he exclaimed in the same low breath. And looking at the glowing, though rather unsanctified light on his features, my interest suddenly expanded to take in the possible drift of his words. I concluded that it was time for me to show myself eminently discreet; having departed so far from the immediate object of my mission as to spend a considerable part of the Sabbath driving and rowing with a strange young man, miles from every place of refuge.

"I'm tired," I said. "Please row back now, I should like to go home."

I rose to give Mr. Rollin my place at the oar. He held out his hand to assist me, and, whether by any malicious design of his or not, at that moment the boat gave a sudden lurch, and I was precipitated helplessly forward into his arms. I felt his kiss burning on my lips.

With anger at the fisherman's unfairness, and bitterness at what I felt to be the mortifying result of my own folly and indiscretion—"Oh," I exclaimed; "I hate you! I wish you would never speak to me again! I wish I had fallen into the water."

The fisherman sent the boat leaping on with long strokes. "D——n it!" he muttered softly: "I wish you had, and I after you!"

We drove for several miles on the way homeward in silence. Then Mr. Rollin spoke. I had been meditating upon Rebecca, upon my determination to make my life in Wallencamp one of supreme self-sacrifice and devotion to duty, and had concluded, in a deeply repentant mind, that this unpleasant incident at the close of the day was only the natural consequence of my error in departing from the prescribed limits of my self-appointed task.

I felt that after this experience it would be unwise for me further to extend my mission work in Mr. Rollin's behalf. So I answered him but briefly, and in a tone of martyr-like composure, which I could not help observing perplexed and irritated him more than anger or the most frigid silence would have done.

I was strengthened in this frame of mind when we parted at the little gate in front of the Ark, and Mr. Rollin proposed another drive for the ensuing week.

Then I revealed to the fisherman the grave burden of my soul.

"Mr. Rollin," I said; "if I had come to Wallencamp merely in search of my own pleasure and diversion, I should doubtless find it very easy to do some things which I do not consider harmful in themselves, but which it is wrong for me to do under the circumstances. I may tell you that I have been very reckless, very thoughtless in my life, but I came here resolving to devote myself to an earnest, serious work. I hoped to do these people good. They do seem to believe in me. They trust me. I cannot bear that they should think me in any way unworthy of their trust. When you asked me to drive this evening,—it was just as it used to be—I did not think. You were very kind. It was pleasant, and I thank you,—but I ought not to have gone—don't you see? I believe, now, that it would have been so much better if I had not."

"I don't see," said Mr. Rollin; "why should you leave me out altogether? Don't I believe in you? Don't I need to be done some good to?"

At this last childishly whimsical appeal I was in sore danger of being diverted from the serious channel of my thoughts. Then the door of the Ark softly opened a little way, and there, nightcapped in white, like a full, benignant moon, appeared the head of Grandma Keeler, as she peered blindly out into the night.

"Poor old soul!" I said. "She has probably been 'waiting and watching.' Don't you see already one of the results of my sinning? Good night," I said, extending my hand to the fisherman, who had fixed on that innocent and unconscious nightcap a darkly withering gaze.

"Oh, never mind me," he muttered, turning abruptly. "Only take care of this infernal old nest of Hoosiers, and respectable people may go to the devil!"



CHAPTER VI.

BECKY AND THE CRADLEBOW.

"Teacher's got Beck's beau!"

"Teacher's got Beck's beau!" I heard it whispered among the school children. Rebecca heard, too, and paled a little, but looked up at me and smiled as frankly as ever.

Seeing her alone afterwards, I took occasion to remark, incidentally, "how kind it was of her friend, Mr. Rollin, to bring me home from church. Fanny was so slow! And I thought he was a very pleasant young man, but even the most estimable people, you know," I added, laughing, with an undertone of studied significance; "are not just fitted to enjoy each other's society always."

Then I blushed under the girl's clear, trustful gaze.

"You don't think I mind what the children talk!" she said.

Every day Rebecca appealed more and more, unconsciously, to what was most generous and grave and heedful in my nature. She seemed to be demanding of me, with mute, gentle importunity, to make real my ideal of life, to be what I knew she believed me to be. Her faith in my superior wisdom and goodness, her slow, timid way of confiding in me, with tears and blushes even; it was all very flattering, very captivating to one who had but so lately risen to occupy the pedestal of a moral instructress, and "my child," "my dear child," I said to her in many private discourses, with more than the tranquil grace and dignity with which such terms had been applied to me, only a year before, by the august principal of Mt. B—— Seminary.

Rebecca read my books, and I drew her out to talk with me about them. She prepared her lessons, with me, out of school. She knew that she might come whenever she chose to my little room at the Ark, which the chimney kept comfortably warm, and often I heard her footsteps on the stairs and her gentle knock at the door.

If I was troubled or perplexed on any account, Rebecca always seemed to understand in that quiet, unobtrusive way of hers, and followed my movements with a grave, restful sympathy in her eyes. On several occasions I had asked her, playfully, to walk up the lane with me after school. So it became a matter of course that she should wait for me. Often we took longer walks, for it was an "open winter," with only one or two light falls of snow.

Then I believed the "Tempter" came to me, in the form of another invitation to drive, from Mr. Rollin.

Occupied with my duties in the school-room, one afternoon, I was startled to observe these characters as suddenly and mysteriously raised as if by the unseen hand of a modern sibyl on the blackboard:—

"teecher's Bo is a setting On the Fens."

Involuntarily raising my eyes to the window, I was unable to discover on the fence opposite anything of the nature indicated in those words. I concluded that the whole was to be taken as one of those deeply allegorical expressions in which the Wallencamp tongue abounded.

Shortly afterward, a boy who had been playing truant and the Jews' harp at the same time, in a subdued and melancholy way under the window, and who had, doubtless, been bribed to undertake his present commission through some extraordinary means, entered the school-room, and laid on my desk a note from the auburn-haired fisherman. It was hastily scrawled in lead pencil, on a leaf torn from a memorandum.

The fisherman confessed to all the meekness and long suffering, without the cheerful intrepidity of Mary's little lamb! He would do all his waiting outside. Mr. Levi was down from West Wallen to-day, and said that he had heard somebody say that there were four letters came for the teacher in last night's mail. Would I like to drive over to West Wallen and get them. The fisherman did not believe that I had been in earnest in the prudish and unreasonable notions I had propounded when he left me the other evening.

"Prudish!" In my newly-acquired elevation of mind, I hugged the term with a deep, intense, and mysterious delight. Oh, if my mother could only know—if my elder sister could only know that I had actually been accused of prudishness! It was in the glow and inspiration of this idea that I indited the answer to Mr. Rollin's missive: "Why would he make it unpleasant and disagreeable for me to do what seemed so plainly my duty?"—and dispatched the same by the pensive and unpunished truant, who was soon heard again revelling in the stolen sweets of his Jews' harp beneath the window.

After this I had no further intercourse with the fisherman for some days. If I chanced to meet him in the lane, Rebecca was always with me. He came one evening to the Ark. The young people were there, singing.

Then I heard, from time to time, of his taking Rebecca to drive, and congratulated myself that, through my composed wisdom and forethought, the little world of Wallencamp was destined to move very smoothly, on the whole.

"I wonder why Mr. Rollin don't go home," observed Grandma Keeler, complacently, on one of those rare occasions when the Keeler family circle held quiet possession of the Ark before the songful company had arrived. "He didn't use to stay but a week or two at a time, and all the rest o' the fishermen have been gone some time now; and he keeps them horses down here, and goes loungin' around with no more object than a butterfly in December."

"I tell ye he's a makin' up to Beck," said Grandpa Keeler, with the knowing air of an old man accustomed to fathom mysteries of this peculiar nature.

A spark shot out of Madeline's great, black eyes. Then she laughed unpleasantly. "There's something in the wind besides Beck," said she.

"Why, I don't know," said Grandma; "he don't hang around there very much, may be, but they say he takes her to ride, and I'm sure he don't wait on nobody else. But I should think, if he was a going to speak out he'd ought to do it, and not waste his time a keepin' a puttin' it off. Why, my fust husband wasn't but a week makin' up his mind, and pa," she continued, referring openly to Grandpa Keeler, "he wan't quite so outspoken, to be sure; but he came around to it in the course of a month or two, and kind o' beat around the bush then, and wanted to know what I thought on't, and—wall, I told him 'yes,'—I didn't see no use in bein' squeamish so long as I'd once made up my mind to it."

"I asked ye as soon as I could!" exclaimed Grandpa, bristling on the defensive. "I wanted to be sure o' gittin' a house fust."

"There!" said Madeline briskly, putting down her foot, and tossing her head as she addressed the old couple. "Be good, children! Be good!—and now, do you mark my words, it isn't Becky Weir that Dave Rollin is hanging around here for. There's some folks to be made up to, and there's some folks, jest as good, to be stepped on. And Dave Rollin—what does he think of Wallencamp folks, anyway? He wouldn't take the trouble to kick 'em out of his road; he'd jest step on 'em, and he's steppin' on Beck Weir. He don't care enough about her to let her alone."

"Wall, I—don't—know!" said Grandma. "What's he stayin' for, then?"

"Staying! Lord, ma!" said Madeline sharply, with a strange cold glitter in her eye. "How do I know what he's stayin' for? Oh," she added, in a tone of lighter bitterness, "It's a mild winter and open roads. He's sketching they say, and exploring the Cape. Let him explore from one end to the other, he won't find such another fool as himself."

"We can't help nothin' by talkin' that way;" said Grandma Keeler, a little pale, though calmly cognizant of Madeline's emotion.

"You know I had an experience of my own once, ma," said Madeline, terribly white about the lips.

"I wouldn't rake up old wounds, daughter." There was nothing unfeeling in Grandma Keeler's tone.

The daughter shut her lips together tightly, as though more than she had intended to reveal had already escaped them, and applied herself desperately to her sewing.

I fancied that I had detected a personally aggressive quality in Madeline's indignant tone.

"I don't see why we should feel that way about Rebecca," I said. "The more one gets acquainted with her, the more lovable and worthy of respect she seems. I knew a great many girls, at school—girls with every advantage of wealth and culture, too, who had not half of Rebecca's grace and refinement, nor a tenth part of her beauty!"

Madeline said nothing, bending to her work with the same bitter compression of the lips.

"It's right you should stand up for her, teacher," said Grandma Keeler, pleasantly. "Miss Waite, she begun by makin' a kind o' pet o' her, but I don't think Rebecca ever set her heart on her as she has on you, and it's easy to see you've took lots o' pains with her. She's a gittin' them same kind o' sorter interestin' high-flowed ways—why, she used to be just like the rest of 'em—jest sich a rompin', roarin' thing as Drussilly Weir is now."

"Goodness gracious, ma!" Madeline put in again, sharply. "What good is it going to do Beck Weir to put on airs? Better stick to her own ways, and her own folks—she'll find they'll stand by her best in the end, I guess—than to be fillin' her head with notions to hurt her feelin's over by and by. She's a fool, I think, for treatin' George Olver as she does. He's worth a dozen Dave Rollins, if his coat don't set quite so fine, and would work his fingers off to suit her if she'd only settle down to him and be sensible."

"Wall," said Grandma Keeler, in a tone that was a curious contrast to Madeline's, "our feelin's won't always go as we'd ought to have em', daughter."

"No, they won't!" Madeline snapped out excitedly, "but, ma, you know I'm in the right of it just as well as I do; and there's Lute Cradlebow's got to dreamin' and moonin' around in the same way. Took it into his head he wanted to get an education—well, what hasn't he took into his head! So he must begin recitin' to teacher. Well, he had in his mind to study, I don't doubt, to begin with, and used to come two or three times a week, and rattle off a string, and now he's here every day of his life, and, if there's any reciting going on, I don't hear it—not that I want to meddle with other folks' business, but I've known those boys a good many years, and I hate to see anybody hurt and run over, even if they be young and ignorant, and making fools of themselves. Some folks are none too good, I think, for all their airs, and had better look out to see where they're going!"

"Why, thar', Madeline!" said Grandma, with a decided touch of disapproval in her voice. "R'a'ly, seems to me you're kind o' out. I'm sure Luther Larkin seems to be a gittin' along finely with his Latin and Algibbery—I'm sure I've heard a lot of it, when I've been goin' through the room, if you ain't; and if he's took it into his head to git book larnin', and maybe scratch enough together to go away somewheres to school, why, I'm sure, there's older boys than him, and not so bright, have ketched up if they set there minds to it, and as for our teacher—Madeline!"

"Oh, I've no doubt but what Miss Hungerford meant kindly," said Madeline, with the lightness she could so suddenly assume. "It's a mighty queer world, that's all!" she added presently, rising and putting on her bonnet; "and managed very queerly, for I suppose it is managed. I'm going out, ma. Those children have split my head with their noise to-day, and I promised Patty I'd come in and sit awhile. Now, if I've been cross and crazy, don't you and teacher talk me over," she said, looking back and trying hard to smile—and she did look very tired and white, as though she had been suffering—"and if those children wake up and begin to squall"—with a glance towards the little bedroom—"let 'em squall. If I've wished it once to-day, I have a hundred times, that they was the other side of sunset!"

"I wish you'd step into Lihu's—such a poor, sufferin' creetur as he is—with these," said Grandma, appearing from the pantry with some eggs in her apron. "I wish you could take the consolations of religion with you, Madeline," she continued gravely, as Mrs. Philander was closing the door.

"Lord, ma! my pocket's full now!" exclaimed Madeline. "Besides, they might break the eggs!" And the latch fell down with a click.

"I wish Madeline was a believer," Grandma sighed, purposely rattling about the cover of the stove to wake up Grandpa, who had fallen asleep in his chair.

Grandpa looked at me, and smiled feebly, then roused himself to meet this supposed challenge like a man.

"Believer, ma?" said he; "why ain't I a believer? As old Cap'n Gates said to me on his last voyage"—Grandpa yawned alarmingly (poor old man! he was but half awake), as this unlucky reminiscence of his sea-faring life flitted through his brain—"says he, 'I read my almanick and my Bible, both, Bijonah;' says he, 'I read 'em both, and I believe there's a great deal o' truth in both on 'em.'"

"Thar, pa!" said Grandma, solemnly, "you'd better go to sleep! you'd better close your eyes, Bijonah Keeler! What if you should never open 'em again on earthly scenes, and them words on your lips,—and you a perfessor!"

Grandpa scratched his head in drowsy bewilderment, passed his hand once or twice over the coarse stubble on his face, and again committed himself helplessly to the sweet obliviousness of slumber.

I drew my chair up confidentially close to Grandma Keeler's, and rested my arms on the table as I looked into her face.

"Grandma!" I said, for I knew that she was better pleased to have me call her that; "I begin to think that I ought never to have come to Wallencamp on a mission, that perhaps it would be just as well if I had never come to Wallencamp at all, I mean. I didn't think. At first, it seemed more than anything else, like something very new to entertain myself with. I didn't think enough of the responsibility. Then, perhaps, I thought too much of it. I don't know. I wish I were out of it all. Grandma, I never tried to do the right thing so hard before in my life. I never worked so hard before—and I don't mind that; but I meant it all for the best, and it's no use, it's just like all the rest. I'm tired. I wish I were out of it."

"Wall, thar' now, darlin'," said Grandma, employing to the full her tone of infinite consolation. "You ain't the first one as mistook a stump for livin' creetur in the night, and don't you talk about givin' up nor nothin' like it, darlin', for we couldn't do without you noways—nor you without us, for yet a while, I'm thinkin', though it does seem strange—and never you mind one straw for what Madeline said, for she was kind o' out to-night, anyway, not having got no letter from Philander, I suppose. But then she ought not to feel so. Why, there was time and time agin that I didn't git no letter from Bijonah Keeler when he was voyagin', and to be sure, they wasn't much better than nothin' when they did come; for pa"—Grandma cast a calmly comprehensive glance at her unconscious mate—"pa was a man that had a great many idees in general, but, when he set down to write a letter, somehow he seemed to consider that it wasn't no place for idees, a letter wasn't—seemed as though he managed a'most a purpose not to get none in."

"Grandma," I said, leaning forward, laughing, and folding my hands in her lap, "you're the best comforter I know of."

"Wall, thar'," said she; "it's a good deal in feelin's, and Madeline ain't r'al well, so she kind o' allows 'em to overcome her sometimes."

"And what did she mean by saying that about Rebecca?" I asked.

"Oh, she just meant girls will be girls, that's all!" replied Grandma; "why, mercy! I know all about that. I don't feel like nothin' much more than a girl myself, half the time; and we all have to have our experiences, to be sure. They ain't nobody else can wear 'em for us, but, dear me! the Lord ain't going to let our experiences hurt us; they're for our betterin'."

"And Lute Cradlebow, Grandma?" I said; "what did she mean about him?"

"Oh, she just meant boys will be boys, that's all—especially big ones—but thar'! I've known 'em to get over it a hundred times and not hurt 'em none. If you're always lookin' at human natur' on the dark side, it seems kind o' desp'rit. My first husband, he wasn't a fretful man, but he was always viewin' the dark side o' things. I suppose one reason was he didn't have no father nor mother, and so he kind o' begun life as a took-in boy, but Pollos Slocum, he done very well by him, for he hadn't no children of his own, but his brother—that was Daniel Slocum—he had six. There was two boys and four girls. Mary, she came fust. She was born February nineteenth"——

I was sorry that Grandma's thoughts had drifted into this hopeless and interminable channel.

I had considered carefully what Madeline had said, and determined on a little new advice for my friend, Rebecca. So, the next time we were alone in my room together, I directed the conversation with a view to this end.

"And I wouldn't trust any one, my dear," I said with cheerful earnestness; "then if people prove true, why, it's all the more delightful; and if not, one isn't disappointed; so you can hold the scales quite indifferently in your own hand, and are always master of the situation. Oh, I wouldn't trust people! It would be very nice if this were the sort of world that you could do it in, but it isn't. It's a very deceitful world."

"But I can trust you, can't I?" Rebecca held me with her gravely questioning eyes.

"Well, I don't know;" I began with the determination to be severely true to my text, but the look in Rebecca's eyes hurt me.

"Oh, yes! little girl," I continued, falling into the half-tender, half-playful tone that it was always easiest to assume with her; "of course, you must trust me I Haven't I been a good teacher to you, so far?" And I sought by smiling in the girl's face, to chase the grieved expression away from it. "What I meant was that I wouldn't trust people generally, because it's a selfish world, and such is the depravity of the human mind that if it appears at all convenient, we are apt, you know, to sacrifice other people to our own interests; so, with all the little kindnesses and politenesses which are current in society, it is still the common practice—and if is best that it should be so—to keep, in the main, a sharp look out for 'Number One!'"