-comers. This was done with apparently such
delight to the children and with some evidently imported expression into
his smooth mask-like face, that Mrs. Martin had to content herself with
watching him with equal curiosity. She was turning away with a sudden
sense of forgotten dignity, when a shout of joyous, childish laughter
attracted her attention to the window. The new assistant, with half a
dozen small children on his square shoulders, walking with bent back and
every simulation of advanced senility, was evidently personating,
with the assistance of astonishingly distorted features, the ogre of a
Christmas pantomime. As his eye caught hers the expression vanished, the
mask-like face returned; he set the children down, and moved away. And
when school began, although he marshaled them triumphantly to the very
door,--with what contortion of face or simulation of character she was
unable to guess,--after he had entered the schoolroom and taken his seat
every vestige of his previous facial aberration was gone, and only his
usual stolidity remained. In vain, as Mrs. Martin expected, the hundred
delighted little eyes before her dwelt at first eagerly and hopefully
upon his face, but, as she HAD NOT expected, recognizing from the
blankness of his demeanor that the previous performance was intended for
them exclusively, the same eager eyes were presently dropped again upon
their books in simple imitation, as if he were one of themselves. Mrs.
Martin breathed freely, and lessons began.

Yet she was nervously conscious, meanwhile, of a more ill-omened
occurrence. This was the non-arrival of several of her oldest pupils,
notably, the refractory and incorrigible Pike County contingent to whom
Sperry had alluded. For the past few days they had hovered on the verge
of active insubordination, and had indulged in vague mutterings which
she had resolutely determined not to hear. It was, therefore, with some
inward trepidations, not entirely relieved by Twing's presence, that she
saw the three Mackinnons and the two Hardees slouch into the school
a full hour after the lessons had begun. They did not even excuse
themselves, but were proceeding with a surly and ostentatious defiance
to their seats, when Mrs. Martin was obliged to look up, and--as the
eldest Hardee filed before her--to demand an explanation. The culprit
addressed--a dull, heavy-looking youth of nineteen--hesitated with an
air of mingled doggedness and sheepishness, and t