gh that old physical geography was like a first talk with a
long-lost friend. It had, indeed, been my old friend. Behind its broad
back I had eaten forbidden apples, I had aimed and discharged the
blow-gun, I had reveled in blood-and-thunder tales that made the drowsy
schoolroom fade before the vast wilderness, the scene of breathless
struggles between Indian and settler, or open into the high seas where
pirate, or worse-than-pirate Britisher, struck flag to American
privateer or man-o'-war.

On an impulse shot up from the dustiest depths of memory, I turned the
old geography sidewise and examined the edges of the cover. Yes, there
was the _cache_ I had made by splitting the pasteboard with my
jack-knife. I thrust in my fingernail; out came a slip of paper. I
glanced at Burbank--he was still busy. I, somewhat stealthily, you may
imagine, opened the paper and--well, my heart beat much more rapidly as
I saw in a school-girl scrawl:

[Illustration: (handwriting)]

[Transcriber's Note: the image is approximately this:

Harvey Sayler hait
Elizabeth Crosby love

with the letters "H", "a", "r", "e", "y", "S", "l", "e" in the first
line and "E", "l", "a", "e", "h", "r", "s", "y" in the second line, in
that order, struck out, as marked by the game mentioned in the
following paragraph.]

I was no longer master of a state; I was a boy in school again. I could
see her laboring over this game of "friendship, love, indifference,
hate." I could see "Redney" Griggs, who sat between her and me, in the
row of desks between and parallel to my row and hers,--could see him
swoop and snatch the paper from her, look at it, grin maliciously, and
toss it over to me. I was in grade A, was sixteen, and was beginning to
take myself seriously. She was in grade D, was little more than half my
age, but looked older,--and how sweet and pretty she was! She had black
hair, thick and wavy, with little tresses escaping from plaits and
ribbons to float about her forehead, ears, and neck. Her skin was darker
then, I think, than it is now, but it had the same smoothness and
glow,--certainly, it could not have had more.

* * * * *

I think the dart must have struck that day,--why else did I keep the bit
of paper? But it did not trouble me until the first winter of my
launching forth as "Harvey Sayler, Attorney and Counselor at Law." She
was the daughter of the Episcopal preacher; and, as every one thought
w