dexterous movement and a slight struggle from the boy, he
lifted the hat. A half-dozen apples, a bird's nest, two birds' eggs,
and a fluttering half-fledged bird fell from it. A wave of delight
and astonishment ran along the benches, a blank look of hopeless
bewilderment settled upon the boy's face, and the gravity of the
situation disappeared forever in the irrepressible burst of laughter,
in which even his brother rebels joined. The smallest child who had been
half-frightened, half-fascinated by the bold, bad, heroic attitude of
the mutineer, was quick to see the ridiculousness of that figure crowned
with cheap schoolboy plunder. The eloquent protest of his wrongs was
lost in the ludicrous appearance of the protester. Even Mrs. Martin felt
that nothing she could say at that moment could lift the rebellion into
seriousness again. But Twing was evidently not satisfied.

"Beg Mrs. Martin's pardon, and say you were foolin' with the boys," he
said in a low voice.

The discomfited rebel hesitated.

"Say it, or I'll SHOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT IN YOUR POCKETS!" said Twing in a
terribly significant aside.

The boy mumbled an apology to Mrs. Martin, scrambled in a blank,
hopeless way to his seat, and the brief rebellion ignominiously ended.
But two things struck Mrs. Martin as peculiar. She overheard the culprit
say, with bated breath and evident sincerity, to his comrades: "Hadn't
nothing in my hat, anyway!" and one of the infant class was heard to
complain, in a deeply-injured way, that the bird's nest was HIS, and had
been "stoled" from his desk. And there still remained the fact for which
Twing's undoubted fascination over the children had somewhat prepared
her--that at recess the malcontents--one and all--seemed to have
forgiven the man who had overcome them, and gathered round him with
unmistakable interest. All this, however, did not blind her to the
serious intent of the rebellion, or of Twing's unaccountable assumption
of her prerogative. While he was still romping with the children she
called him in.

"I must remind you," she said, with a slight nervous asperity, "that
this outrageous conduct of Tom Hardee was evidently deliberated and
prepared by the others, and cannot end in this way."

He looked at her with a face so exasperatingly expressionless that
she could have slapped it as if it had belonged to one of the older
scholars, and said,--"But it HAS ended. It's a dead frost."

"I don't know what you mean; and I