ning, she proposed that the school should prepare
original papers, to be read aloud, the reading to be followed by "a
spread" given by the Faculty. She made no suggestion with regard to
the character of the papers to be sent in, other than to say that she
knew very well there were some good writers in the school, and she
should expect every one to do her best.

This proposal was gladly accepted. The girls clapped when she had
finished, and some began to stamp noisily, but this a motion of the
principal's hand checked.

There began at once to be conjectures as to whose piece would be the
best. Nine-tenths of the girls agreed it would be Kate Underwood, the
other tenth were for Delia Williams, who, when she tried for an honor,
seldom failed to secure it; and hadn't she once written a piece on
Robert Browning, of which not a scholar could understand a word, but
which, it was reported, Miss Ashton said "was excellent, showing rare
appreciation of the merits of a great poet"?

One thing was certain, there was hardly a girl in school who had not,
before going to bed that night, wandered around in her dazed thoughts
for some subject upon which she could write in a way that would
surprise every one.

Lilly White, the dunce of the school, had hers written by the
beginning of study hours. It covered three pages of foolscap paper,
and had at least the merit of being written on only one side.

Among the few books Marion Parke had brought from her Western home,
was an old magazine, printed by a Yale College club, and edited by her
father when he was a member of the college.

This had in it one short story suggested by the West Rock at New
Haven. In this rock was a rough cave, and here, tradition said, the
regicides Goff and Whalley hid themselves from pursuit, after the
murder of Charles I. The story was well told, not holding too
rigorously to facts, but at the same time faithful enough to real
incidents to make it not only interesting but valuable.

These were tender and touching scenes of a wife and a betrothed, who,
through dangers of discovery and arrest, carried food and papers to
the fugitives.

The story had always been a great favorite of Marion's. One day when
she felt homesick she had taken it out, read it, and left it on the
top of her table, under her Bible. Being very busy afterwards, and
consequently the homesickness gone, she did not think of it again; she
did not even notice that it had been abstracted fro