and policy alone would have
forbade it, had Cynthia thought of policy.

CHAPTER XV

Public opinion is like the wind--it bloweth where it listeth. It
whistled around Brampton the next day, whirling husbands and wives
apart, and families into smithereens. Brampton had a storm all to
itself--save for a sympathetic storm raging in Coniston--and all about a
school-teacher.

Had Cynthia been a certain type of woman, she would have had all the men
on her side and all of her own sex against her. It is a decided point
to be recorded in her favor that she had among her sympathizers as many
women as men. But the excitement of a day long remembered in Brampton
began, for her, when a score or more of children assembled in front of
the little house, tramping down the snow on the grass plots, shouting
for her to come to school with them. Children give no mortgages, or keep
no hardware stores.

Cynthia, trying to read in front of the fire, was all in a tremble at
the sound of the high-pitched little voices she had grown to love, and
she longed to go out and kiss them, every one. Her nature, however,
shrank from any act which might appear dramatic or sensational. She
could not resist going to the window and smiling at them, though they
appeared but dimly--little dancing figures in a mist. And when they
shouted, the more she shook her head and put her finger to her lips in
reproof and vanished from their sight. Then they trooped sadly on to
school, resolved to make matters as disagreeable as possible for poor
Miss Bruce, who had not offended in any way.

Two other episodes worthy of a place in this act of the drama occurred
that morning, and one had to do with Ephraim. Poor Ephraim! His way had
ever been to fight and ask no questions, and in his journey through the
world he had gathered but little knowledge of it. He had limped home the
night before in a state of anger of which Cynthia had not believed him
capable, and had reappeared in the sitting room in his best suit of
blue.

"Where are you going, Cousin Eph?" Cynthia had asked suspiciously.

"Never you mind, Cynthy."

"But I do mind," she said, catching hold of his sleeve. "I won't let you
go until you confess."

"I'm a-goin' to tell Isaac Worthington what I think of him, that's whar
I'm a-goin'," cried Ephraim "what I always hev thought of him sence he
sent a substitute to the war an' acted treasonable here to home talkin'
ag'in' Lincoln."

"Oh, Cousin Eph, you