versation with Mr. Coulson, and
had not spied her. She dropped upon the grass, safely hidden by the
alders, and began to drag her damp stockings over her muddy feet.
There would arise dire consequences from this later, but Elizabeth
found the evil of the hour sufficient unto it and never added the
troubles of the future. As she sat thus busily engaged, she was
startled by the sound of footsteps and drew back further behind her
flowery screen. The next moment Mr. Coulson strode rapidly past her
and up the lane without glancing to the right or left. Elizabeth
stared after him. He had passed so close she might have touched him,
and how pale and angry he looked! The schoolmaster was one of the
objects upon which Elizabeth showered the wealth of her devotion, and
she was vaguely disturbed for him. He looked just as if he had been
whipping someone in school. Then her own uncomfortable condition
obtruded itself once more, and she arose. She straightened her
sunbonnet, smoothed down her crumpled skirts and slowly and fearfully
took her way down the lane. She dreaded to meet her aunt, knowing by
sad experience that as soon as that lady's eye fell upon her, not only
would all the misdemeanors of which she was conscious appear
silhouetted against Miss Gordon's perfection, but dozens of unsuspected
sins would spring to light and stand out black in the glare.

She peeped through the tangle of alders and saw that Aunt Margaret was
now talking to Annie, with her back to the lane, and the same instant
she spied a way of escape. The lane ran straight past the big stone
house and down to the line of birches that bordered the stream, forming
the road by which Mr. MacAllister reached his old mill, lying away down
there in the hollow. Down in the lower part of the lane where the
birches grew, William Gordon was wont to walk in the evenings, and here
Elizabeth, with infinite relief, spied him just coming into view from
beyond a curve. He was walking slowly with bent head, his long, thin
hands clasped behind him. At his side was a young man, of medium
height, thick-set, and powerful-looking. This was Mr. Tom Teeter, who
worked the farm upon which The Dale stood, and lived only a few hundred
yards from the Gordons. Mr. Teeter was an Irishman, with a fine gift
for speech-making. He was much sought after, for tea-meetings and
during political campaigns, and had won the proud alliterative name of
Oro's Orator. Tom was now holdin