ver the ice. Miss Lois was kind, and sometimes came up to regulate his
housekeeping; but nothing went as formerly. His coffee was seldom good;
and he found himself growing peevish--at least his present domestic, a
worthy widow named McGlathery, had remarked upon it. But Anne must not
think the domestic was in fault; he had reason to believe that she meant
well even when she addressed him on the subject of his own
short-comings. And here the chaplain's old humor peeped through, as he
added, quaintly, that poor Mistress McGlathery's health was far from
strong, she being subject to "inward tremblings," which tremblings she
had several times described to him with tears in her eyes, while he had
as often recommended peppermint and ginger, but without success; on the
contrary, she always went away with a motion of the skirts and a manner
as to closing the door which, the chaplain thought, betokened offense.
Anne smiled over these letters, and then sighed. If she could only be
with him again--with them all! She dreamed at night of the old man in
his arm-chair, of Miss Lois, of the boys, of Tita curled in her furry
corner, which she had transferred, in spite of Miss Lois's
remonstrances, to the sitting-room of the church-house. Neither Tita nor
Pere Michaux had written; she wondered over their new silence.

Anne's pupils had, of course, exhaustively weighed and sifted the new
teacher, and had decided to like her. Some of them decided to adore her,
and expressed their adoration in bouquets, autograph albums, and various
articles in card-board supposed to be of an ornamental nature. They
watched her guardedly, and were jealous of every one to whom she spoke;
she little knew what a net-work of plots, observation, mines and
countermines, surrounded her as patiently she toiled through each long
monotonous day. These adorations of school-girls, although but
unconscious rehearsals of the future, are yet real while they last;
Anne's adorers went sleepless if by chance she gave especial attention
to any other pupil. The adored one meanwhile did not notice these little
intensities; her mind was absorbed by other thoughts.

Four days before Christmas two letters came; one was her own to Rast,
returned at last from the Dead-letter Office; the other was from Miss
Lois, telling of the serious illness of Dr. Gaston. The old chaplain had
had a stroke of paralysis, and Rast had been summoned; fortunately his
last letter had been from St. Louis,