was laid upon my sleeve. I looked up. It was Johnson.

He drew from his pocket a Spanish dollar. "I reckoned," he said,
cheerfully, "I'd run again ye somewhar some time. My old woman told me
to give ye that when I did, and say that she 'didn't keep no hotel.'
But she allowed she'd keep the letter, and has spelled it out to the
chillern."

Here was the opportunity I had longed for to touch Johnson's pride and
affection in the brave but unprotected girl. "I want to talk to you
about Miss Johnson," I said, eagerly.

"I reckon so," he said, with an exasperating smile. "Most fellers do.
But she ain't Miss Johnson no more. She's married."

"Not to that big chap over from Ten Mile Mills?" I said breathlessly.

"What's the matter with HIM," said Johnson. "Ye didn't expect her to
marry a nobleman, did ye?"

I said I didn't see why she shouldn't--and believed that she HAD.

THE NEW ASSISTANT AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL.

CHAPTER I.

The schoolmistress of Pine Clearing was taking a last look around her
schoolroom before leaving it for the day. She might have done so with
pride, for the schoolroom was considered a marvel of architectural
elegance by the citizens, and even to the ordinary observer was a
pretty, villa-like structure, with an open cupola and overhanging roof
of diamond-shaped shingles and a deep Elizabethan porch. But it was
the monument of a fierce struggle between a newer civilization and a
barbarism of the old days, which had resulted in the clearing away of
the pines--and a few other things as incongruous to the new life and far
less innocent, though no less sincere. It had cost the community fifteen
thousand dollars, and the lives of two of its citizens.

Happily there was no stain of this on the clean white walls, the
beautifully-written gilt texts, or the shining blackboard that had
offered no record which could not be daily wiped away. And, certainly,
the last person in the world to suggest any reminiscences of its
belligerent foundation was the person of the schoolmistress. Mature,
thin, precise,--not pretty enough to have excited Homeric feuds, nor yet
so plain as to preclude certain soothing graces,--she was the widow of
a poor Congregational minister, and had been expressly imported from
San Francisco to squarely mark the issue between the regenerate and
unregenerate life. Low-voiced, gentlewomanly, with the pallor of
ill-health perhaps unduly accented by her mourning, which was still cut