nd
pondered it in her heart.

Does any one of our little readers ask why Miss Matilda did not free
the child then? Tidy's services paid her owner's board at her brother's
house, and she couldn't afford to give away her very subsistence; COULD
SHE?

CHAPTER IX. THE FIRST LESSON.

THE walk to school was a very delightful one, and as the trio trudged
over the road from day to day, chattering like magpies, laughing,
singing, shouting, and dancing in the exuberance of childish glee,
all seemed equally light-hearted and joyous. Even the little slave who
carried the books which she was unable to read, and the basket of
dinner of which she could not by right partake, with a keen eye for
the beautiful, and a sensitive heart to appreciate nature, could not
apparently have been more happy, if her condition had been reversed, and
she had been made the served instead of the servant.

The way for half a mile lay through a dense pine-wood,--the tall trees
rising like stately pillars in some vast temple filled with balsamic
incense, and floored with a clean, elastic fabric, smooth as polished
marble, over which the little feet lightly and gayly tripped. In the
central depths where the sun's rays never penetrated, and the fallen
leaves lay so thickly on the ground, no flowers could grow, but on the
outer edges spring lavished her treasures. The trailing arbutus added
new fragrance to the perfumed air, frail anemones trembled in the
wind, and violets flourished in the shade. The blood-root lifted its
lily-white blossoms to the light, and the cream-tinted, fragile bells of
the uvularia nestled by its side. Passing the wood and its embroidered
flowery border, a brook ran across the road. The rippling waters were
almost hidden by the bushes which grew upon its banks, where the wild
honeysuckle and touch-me-not, laurels and eglantine, mingled their
beautiful blossoms, and wooed the bee and humming-bird to their
gay bowers. Over this stream a narrow bridge led directly to the
school-house; but the homeward side was so attractive, that the children
always tarried there until they saw the teacher on the step, or heard
the little bell tinkling from the door. Tidy remained with them till
the last minute, and there her bright face might invariably be seen when
school was dismissed in the afternoon. A large flat rock between the
woods and the flowery edges of Pine Run was the place of rendezvous.

One summer's morning they were earlier th