tay on until December, and finish the fall term so triumphantly begun.

The memories of the little girl in the pink apron, together with the pleas
of Mr. Benjamin Jarvis on behalf of Allan, and the assurance of Mr. Samuel
Wilson that his children had cried "five nights runnin'" was almost too
much for Mary. In one mad wave of sympathy she determined to give up
college and to wire her mother that the Path of Duty for her led
unmistakably to the Bear Canyon school. But the more mature judgment of
Mr. Hunter and Aunt Nan prevailed, and an hour later three very reluctant
trustees rode away, leaving behind them a sad, but much relieved,
school-teacher, who lay long awake that night and pondered over the
desperate state of affairs in Bear Canyon.

But her worry, like most that encumbers the world, was needless, for the
County Superintendent over at Elk Creek lent a helping hand, and sent Miss
Martha Bumps to Bear Canyon. Now Miss Bumps was not Mary, but she was
assuredly Miss Martha Bumps, and the three trustees, disappointed as they
were not to have Mary, held their heads a trifle higher as they drove to
town. For the aforesaid Miss Bumps was a character of renown throughout
the county, and it was only because of the whooping-cough in the
consolidated rural schools of Willow Creek that she was prompted to
forsake her larger field and hurry to the aid of Bear Canyon.

For twenty-five years Miss Martha Bumps had dedicated her energies to the
teaching of Wyoming country schools. Some who knew her well affirmed that
she had made money thereby; and this statement will doubtless be given
credence by all who are not themselves school-teachers. After
relinquishing the dreams in which most women of thirty indulge, and
deciding once and for all that she would give the best of her life to
teaching, she had spent much thought and ingenuity in scheming how such a
vocation could be a distinctly pleasurable one. Ten years of boarding in
homesteaders' cabins, of sleeping with the youngest child, and eating salt
pork three times a day, of drinking condensed milk on ranches devoted
solely to cattle, and of riding miles to her place of business in all
kinds of weather--these experiences had been fruitful in the extreme. Now
she boarded nowhere. Instead, she lived in her own two-room house, which,
clapboarded, shingled, windowed and doored after the manner of all houses,
was mounted upon four stout cart-wheels, and driven by an obliging trustee