dy drawn their overcoat collars up to their ears. They
stood, solemnly and silently, near the door, each one ready to frame the
momentous question, "May I have the pleasure of seeing you home?" when
the girl of his choice should pass. Some of them looked nervous; others
had assumed an air of indifference, which deceived no one.

John Hampden stroked his cap, wishing that girls weren't so slow about
getting ready. But he forgot the girls in a moment, and began to repeat,
under his breath, a few lines of the poem they had been reading that
evening:

"Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood."

He wondered who Hampden was, and what he had done to make him famous
enough to be mentioned in such a poem as Gray's Elegy. Probably a great
general, John decided, who had led vast armies to victory.

John smiled to himself. There surely could not have been two persons
with the same name more utterly unlike, he thought, than the John
Hampden of the poem and John Hampden, the druggist's clerk--"a youth to
Fortune and to Fame unknown."

Just then two girls stopped before him, and John woke from his dreams to
find that the schoolhouse was almost deserted, and that the janitor's
yawning little son had begun to put out the lights.

The girls, no doubt, thought he had smiled at them, and John had
presence of mind enough left to accept the situation. He had meant to
walk home with Matilda Haines, but Matilda had disappeared.

John felt that he hardly knew Margaret Shirley, she had been away in
Boston so long, and he hadn't even been introduced to the young girl
beside her.

"Allow me to present Mr. Hampden, Celia--Mr. John Hampden," said
Margaret, as if in answer to his thought. "My cousin, Miss Kirke, from
Boston, Mr. Hampden."

John felt a trifle afraid of Miss Kirke, she took the introduction so
smilingly and easily. John himself blushed and stammered, and felt more
uncomfortable than ever, when she said, laughingly:

"How delightful to have one of Gray's heroes escort one home, right
after reading his poem! Of _course_, you are a direct descendant of this
famous John Hampden?"

"I don't know," said John, awkwardly; "I'm afraid not. I don't even know
what he did. Mr. Carr didn't explain that passage very fully."

"Oh, _nobody_ pretends to know all about the allusions in poetry. He
lived somewhere in England, in the dark ages, didn't he--and refused to
pay taxes, or so