ms, his eyes never leaving Mary's face. She was telling them
the story of the _Dog of Flanders_. The Vigilantes, crouching beneath the
window, heard her as she finished.

"The next day," she said, "they came to the great cathedral, and found
Nello and Patrasche dead upon the stone floor. People were sorry then.
Alois' father was one who came. He realized how cruel he had been to
Nello, and was ready now to help him. But it was too late. Little Alois
came also. She begged Nello to wake and come home for the Christmas
festivities, and cried when she saw that he could not. Then a great artist
came. He had seen Nello's picture of the old man on the fallen tree, and
he knew that some day Nello might become a wonderful painter, even though
another had won the Antwerp prize. He wanted to take Nello away with him,
he said, and teach him art. But he, also, was too late, for Nello and
Patrasche had gone away together to a Kinder Country. All their lives they
had not been separated, and so the people of their little village, sorry
and ashamed, made them one grave and laid them to rest together."

There was a silence in the Bear Canyon school-house until a little girl in
a pink apron sobbed. Sobs were at a discount in Bear Canyon, and yet
strangely enough no one laughed. Allan Jarvis, in the back seat, was
intent upon his finger-nails. The others were gazing admiringly at their
new teacher.

"It's such a sad story," said the little girl, using her pink apron for a
handkerchief, "but I like it all the same."

"Deary me!" cried the new teacher, depositing the two littlest ones on the
floor, "it's half-past four! We must close school at once!"

At that the big Jarvis boy left his seat and came down the aisle, for the
first time in his life abstaining from pulling the hair of the girls
nearest him.

"Shan't I get your horse ready for you, ma'am?" he asked.

The new teacher smiled gratefully upon him.

"If you please, Allan," she said. "I'll be ever so much obliged." And
Allan Jarvis departed for the horse sheds--a conquered hero!

Mary, tired but enthusiastic, told them all about it as they rode home
together, followed at a respectful distance by a dinner-pail laden throng.
How she had arrived that morning to find Allan Jarvis the center of a
mischief-bent circle; how she had begun the day by the most exciting
shipwreck story she knew; and how the promise of another story before four
o'clock had worked a miracle. They were sta