auburn-haired fisherman. It was hastily scrawled in
lead pencil, on a leaf torn from a memorandum.

The fisherman confessed to all the meekness and long suffering, without
the cheerful intrepidity of Mary's little lamb! He would do all his
waiting outside. Mr. Levi was down from West Wallen to-day, and said that
he had heard somebody say that there were four letters came for the
teacher in last night's mail. Would I like to drive over to West Wallen
and get them. The fisherman did not believe that I had been in earnest in
the prudish and unreasonable notions I had propounded when he left me the
other evening.

"Prudish!" In my newly-acquired elevation of mind, I hugged the term with
a deep, intense, and mysterious delight. Oh, if my mother could only
know--if my elder sister could only know that I had actually been accused
of prudishness! It was in the glow and inspiration of this idea that I
indited the answer to Mr. Rollin's missive: "Why would he make it
unpleasant and disagreeable for me to do what seemed so plainly my
duty?"--and dispatched the same by the pensive and unpunished truant, who
was soon heard again revelling in the stolen sweets of his Jews' harp
beneath the window.

After this I had no further intercourse with the fisherman for some days.
If I chanced to meet him in the lane, Rebecca was always with me. He came
one evening to the Ark. The young people were there, singing.

Then I heard, from time to time, of his taking Rebecca to drive, and
congratulated myself that, through my composed wisdom and forethought,
the little world of Wallencamp was destined to move very smoothly, on the
whole.

"I wonder why Mr. Rollin don't go home," observed Grandma Keeler,
complacently, on one of those rare occasions when the Keeler family
circle held quiet possession of the Ark before the songful company had
arrived. "He didn't use to stay but a week or two at a time, and all the
rest o' the fishermen have been gone some time now; and he keeps them
horses down here, and goes loungin' around with no more object than a
butterfly in December."

"I tell ye he's a makin' up to Beck," said Grandpa Keeler, with the
knowing air of an old man accustomed to fathom mysteries of this peculiar
nature.

A spark shot out of Madeline's great, black eyes. Then she laughed
unpleasantly. "There's something in the wind besides Beck," said she.

"Why, I don't know," said Grandma; "he don't hang around there very much,
may be, bu