at first night when the string broke.

I heard that he had gone to New Bedford; and it was a day or two
afterwards that, coming out of the school-house after the meeting, I saw
him standing on the steps alone. I knew that an escort from among the
Wallencamp youths was close behind me. I hastened to put my hand on
Luther's arm.

"Will you walk home with me?" I said, looking up in his face and smiling.
I knew that the face lifted to his then was a beautiful one, that the
hand resting on his arm was small and daintily gloved, unlike the bare
coarse hands of the Wallencampers. I knew that my dress had an air and a
grace also foreign to Wallencamp, that a delicate perfume went up from my
garments, that my voice was more than usually winning. I experienced a
dangerous sense of satisfaction in the conquest of this unsophisticated
youth--a conquest not wholly without its retributive pain and
intoxication.

I felt the Cradlebow's arm tremble as we walked up the lane.

"I have a little private lecture to give you, Luther," I said. "Of course
you have been very much absorbed in your own affairs lately, but is that
an excuse for forsaking your old friends entirely? Especially if you are
going away. Are you going away?"

"Yes," said Luther.

"When?" I asked.

"In April," he answered briefly.

[Illustration: GRANDMA KEELER INTRODUCES THE NEW TEACHER.
Scene from the Play.]

"And weren't you ever coming to see me, again?" I murmured with designing
soft reproach.

"I was coming up by and by, to say good-bye," said Luther, brokenly.

"Only for that?" I questioned, and sighed with a perfect abandonment of
rectitude and good faith to the selfish gratification of that moment.

"What else should I come up for?" he exclaimed, breaking out into sudden
passion. "Except to tell you what you don't want to hear; that I love
you, teacher, I love you."

"Oh, hush!" I cried with a little accent of unaffected pain. "It isn't
right for me to let you talk to me in that way, Luther. Oh, don't you
see? you're nothing but a boy to me!"

"That's a lie!" the boy replied, with face and eyes aflame. "And because
I am poor, and because I am more ignorant than you, you make it an excuse
to trifle with me--and you look only to the outside, but you know I have
lived as long as you--a boy's head, you mean," he went on with choking,
fiery bitterness. "And it may be, and you are very kind, God knows! But I
can tell you one thing, teacher, it isn't a