d popular young lady
has abolished the use of the rod, and by substituting the law of
kindness she has built up the most flourishing academy in the
State."

Ezra read the notice three times. Then he laid the paper down, and
clapping his hand upon it, exclaimed: "Well, I'll be doggoned ef that
ain't the woman for me! _Any_ girl thet could teach a county school an'
abolish whuppin'--not only a chance to do it, but a crowd o' young
rascals _needin_' it all around 'er, an' her _not doin' it_! An' yit
some other persons has been known to strain a p'int to whup a person
they 'ain't rightly got no business _to_ whup." He read the notice
again. "Purty name that, too, Myrtle Musgrove. Sounds like a girl to go
out walkin' with under the myrtle-trees in the grove moonlight nights,
Myrtle Musgrove does.

"I declare, I ain't to say religious, but I b'lieve that notice was
sent to me providential.

"Of co'se, maybe she wouldn't look at me ef I ast her; but one thing
shore, she _can't if I don't_.

"Claybank is a good hund'ed miles from here 'n' I couldn't leave the
farm now, noways; besides, the day I start a-makin' trips from home,
talk'll start, an' I'll be watched close-ter'n what I'm watched now--ef
that's possible. But th' ain't nothin' to hender me _writin_'--ez I
can see."

This idea, once in his mind, lent a new impulse to Ezra's life, a fresh
spring to his gait, so evident to solicitous eyes that during the next
week even his dog noticed it and had a way of running up and sniffing
about him, as if asking what had happened.

An era of hope had dawned for the hitherto downcast man simply because
Miss Myrtle Musgrove, a woman he had never seen, had abolished whipping
in a distant school.

Two weeks passed before Ezra saw his way clearly to write the proposed
letter, but he did, nevertheless, in the interval, walk up and down his
butter-bean arbor on moonlight nights, imagining Miss Myrtle beside
him--Miss Myrtle, named for his favorite flower. He _had_ preferred
the violet, but he had changed his mind. Rose-colored crepe-myrtles were
blooming in his garden at the time. Maybe this was why he began to think
of her as a pink-faced laughing girl, typified by the blushing flower.
Everything was so absolutely real in her setting that the ideal girl
walked, a definite embodiment of his fancy, night after night by his
side, and whether it was from his life habit or an intuitive fancy, he
looked _upward_ into her f