on the old Turtle Mountain trail, stands the
weather-beaten schoolhouse where Martha Perkins got her meagre
education, and where Bud, her brother, was now attending. The
schoolhouse is bare and unlovely, without tree or flower. The rain
and the sun, the scorching winds of spring and winter's piercing
blizzards have had their way with it for many years, and now it
defies them all, for its paint is all gone, and it has no beauty for
them to fade.

A straggling woodpile and a long straw covered shed stand near it.
Three windows, curtainless and staring, are in each side, and a small
porch with two steps leading up to it is at the south end. Here the
gophers frolic in the quiet summer afternoons, and steal what is left
of the children's dinners from the tin pails behind the door. The
porch smells of crumbs.

Away to the east, Oak Creek runs through a wooded belt of fertile
lands, its tall elms and spruce giving a grateful shade to the
farmers' cattle. To the north are the sand-hills of the Aissinboine,
where stiff spruce trees stand like sentinels on the red sand; but no
tiny seedling had ever been brought to the school-yard, no kind hand
had ever sought to relieve that desolate grayness, bleak and lonely
as a rainy midnight in a deserted house.

Inside, the walls are dull with age, so dark and smoked you would
think they could become no darker shade, but on the ceiling above the
long stovepipe that runs from the stove at the door to the chimney at
the other end, there runs a darker streak still. The stove is a big,
square box, set on four stubby feet, and bears the name "Sultana."

Some small effort has been made to brighten the walls. One of Louis
Wain's cat pictures, cut from a London Graphic, is stuck on the wall
with molasses. There is a picture of the late King Edward when he was
the Prince of Wales, and one of the late Queen Victoria framed with
varnished wheat. There is a calendar of '93 showing red-coated
foxhunters in full chase. Here the decorations end abruptly.

The teacher's desk is of unpainted wood, and on its lid, which lifts
up, revealing the mysteries of mysteries below, there run ancient
rivers of ink, pointing back to a terrible day when Bud Perkins
leaned against the teacher's desk in class. A black spot on the floor
under the teacher's chair shows just how far-reaching was Bud's
offence.

The desks are all ink-stained and cut and inscribed with letters and
names. Names are there on the old des