was
soon fast asleep. Tired little Teacher!

The breeze freshened and tumbled her hair and fanned her flushed
cheek, and it did more than that; for, as the drifting clouds
betokened, the weather was changing, and now a gust of wind caught at
her papers and took some of them out of the window, tossing and
whirling them hither and thither. Some were carried along the wayside
and lost utterly. One fluttered high over the tree tops and out across
the meadow, and then suddenly ceased its flight and drifted slowly
down like a dried leaf, past the face of a young man who sat on a
stone, moodily gazing in the meadow brook. He reached out a long arm
and caught it as it fluttered by, just in time to save it from
annihilation in the water.

For a moment he held the scrap of paper absently between his fingers,
then glancing down at it he spied faintly written, half-obliterated
verses and read them; then, with awakened interest, he read them
again, smoothing the torn bit of paper out on his knee. The place
where he sat was well screened from the road by a huge basswood tree,
which spread great limbs quite across the stream, and swept both its
banks with drooping branches and broad leaves. Now he held the scrap
on his open palm and studied it closely and thoughtfully. It was the
worn piece from which Betty had copied the verses.

"Oh, send me a thought on the winds that blow.
On the wing of a bird send a thought to me;
For the way is so long that I may not know,
And there are no paths on the troubled sea.

"Out of the darkness I saw you go,--
Into the shadows where sorrows be,--
Wounded and bleeding, and sad and slow,--
Into the darkness away from me.

"Out of my life and into the night,
But never out of my heart, my own.
Into the darkness out of the light,
Bleeding and wounded, and walking alone."

Here the words were quite erased and scratched over, and the pathetic
bit of paper looked as if it had been tear-stained. Carefully and
smoothly he laid it in his long bill book. The book was large and
plethoric with bank notes, and there beside them lay the little scrap
of paper, worn and soiled, yet tear washed, and as the young man
touched it tenderly he smiled and thought that in it was a wealth of
something no bank note could buy. With a touch of sentiment
unsuspected b