lent, and he was alone.

He arose, startled, quickly gathered his bundle, and looked around him.
The sun was strong and high, the morning fresh and vigorous. Stamping
one foot angrily, he strode jauntily out of the wood toward the big
road.

But ever and anon he glanced curiously back. Had he seen a haunt? Or was
the elf-girl real? And then he thought of her words:

"We'se known us all our lives."

_Two_

THE SCHOOL

Day was breaking above the white buildings of the Negro school and
throwing long, low lines of gold in at Miss Sarah Smith's front window.
She lay in the stupor of her last morning nap, after a night of
harrowing worry. Then, even as she partially awoke, she lay still with
closed eyes, feeling the shadow of some great burden, yet daring not to
rouse herself and recall its exact form; slowly again she drifted toward
unconsciousness.

"_Bang! bang! bang!_" hard knuckles were beating upon the door below.

She heard drowsily, and dreamed that it was the nailing up of all her
doors; but she did not care much, and but feebly warded the blows away,
for she was very tired.

"_Bang! bang! bang!_" persisted the hard knuckles.

She started up, and her eye fell upon a letter lying on her bureau. Back
she sank with a sigh, and lay staring at the ceiling--a gaunt, flat,
sad-eyed creature, with wisps of gray hair half-covering her baldness,
and a face furrowed with care and gathering years.

It was thirty years ago this day, she recalled, since she first came to
this broad land of shade and shine in Alabama to teach black folks.

It had been a hard beginning with suspicion and squalor around; with
poverty within and without the first white walls of the new school home.
Yet somehow the struggle then with all its helplessness and
disappointment had not seemed so bitter as today: then failure meant but
little, now it seemed to mean everything; then it meant disappointment
to a score of ragged urchins, now it meant two hundred boys and girls,
the spirits of a thousand gone before and the hopes of thousands to
come. In her imagination the significance of these half dozen gleaming
buildings perched aloft seemed portentous--big with the destiny not
simply of a county and a State, but of a race--a nation--a world. It was
God's own cause, and yet--

"_Bang! bang! bang!_" again went the hard knuckles down there at the
front.

Miss Smith slowly arose, shivering a bit and wondering who could
possibly be rap