self, riding through the arithmetic and slaying every
complex fraction that lay in her path.

Miss Gordon witnessed the transformation in Elizabeth with amazement,
and with devout thankfulness that by the judicious use of Mrs. Jarvis's
name she had at last succeeded in arousing her niece's ambition. Rosie
saw and was both proud and puzzled. It seemed so queer to see Lizzie
working in school. Mary gave up all hopes of ever catching up to her,
and John and Charles Stuart were sometimes seized with spasms of alarm
lest by some unexpected leap she might land some morning in their class.

Elizabeth's days were not too full of work to preclude other interests,
and just as the winter was vanishing in sunshiny days and little rivers
of melting snow, two very great events occurred. Just the last day
before the Easter vacation, Miss Hillary bade Forest Glen farewell and
rode away for the last time in the red cutter. Elizabeth and Rosie
left their decimals and the Complete Speller to take care of themselves
for fully an hour, while with their heads on the desk they wept
bitterly. For, after all, Miss Hillary was a teacher, and parting with
even the poorest kind of teacher, especially one who was so pretty, was
heart-breaking.

That was bad enough, but on the very same day old Sandy McLachlan came
to the school and took Eppie away. Fortunately, her two friends did
not know until the evening that Eppie, too, was gone forever; but when
they did discover it, Elizabeth's grief was not to be assuaged.

The next morning Eppie and her grandfather drove away from Forest Glen.
Jake Martin had not resorted to the law as he had threatened, neither
had Tom Teeter relaxed his vigilance. The old man's Highland pride had
at the last driven him forth. The hardest part of it all had been that
the thrust that had given him his final hurt had come from his closest
friend. Noah Clegg was the warmest-hearted man in Forest Glen and
would have given over his whole farm to Sandy if he would have accepted
it. But, as Tom Teeter declared hotly, Noah had no tact and was a
blazing idiot beside, and a well-intentioned remark of his sent old
Sandy out of the community. Noah was not a man of war and was so
anxious that his old friend should give up his untenable position
peaceably that he had very kindly and generously explained to Sandy
that it would be far better for him to come and live on a neighbor that
wanted him than on a man like Jake Mart