them,
with the neat parsonage, so much of which he had built with his own
hand, and the dear ones she had left behind her there.

To-day she had reached her destination, and a smiling girl had met her
at the door and ushered her into the lower corridor of the academy.

It was just after tea, an hour given up to social enjoyment, and the
corridor was full of young girls, busy and noisy.

The stranger shrank back into the recess of the door; she hoped no one
would see her: if she could only escape until the principal came, how
glad she should be!

Little groups kept constantly passing her; many from among them turned
their heads and looked at her inquiringly; some smiled and bowed, but
no one spoke, until a tall girl who had passed and repassed her a
number of times left her party and came to her.

"You are our two hundredth!" she said, holding her hand out cordially
toward her. "We are glad you have come! Now we are the largest number
that have ever been in this school at one time. Shall I take you to
Miss Ashton?"

Marion held very tight to the hand that was given her as they passed
together down through the lines of scholars toward the principal's
room. More smiles and cheery nods met her, and now and then she caught
"two hundredth" as she passed.

A knock at a door was immediately answered by a pleasant "Come in."

"Oh, it's you, Dorothy, is it? I'm always glad to see you," said Miss
Ashton, rising from the table at which she had been writing.

"I've brought you your new pupil," said Dorothy.

"And I'm very glad to see her. It is Marion Parke, I presume. You
have had a long, hard journey, but you look so well I need not ask how
you have borne it."

As she was giving Marion this welcome, Miss Ashton, with the quick
look by which her long experience had accustomed her to judging
something of character, saw in the timid new pupil a very different
girl from what in her troubled thoughts of her she had expected her to
be.

Two large gray eyes from under long, drooping eyelids met hers with an
appealing look; lips trembled sensitively as they tried to answer her,
and a delicate color came slowly up over the rounded cheeks.

"I am very sorry to be late," Marion said with a self-possession that
belied the timidity her face expressed; "but sickness of my friends
with whom I was to come, detained me."

"I had no doubt there was a sufficient reason," Miss Ashton answered
kindly. "You are a week behind most of t