an eye on the
clock meanwhile. The boys wore the air of dogs who see their master
coming to untie them; they jumped and quivered, making the benches
squeak and rattle, and shifted their feet about on the uncarpeted
floor, producing sounds of the kind most trying to a nervous teacher.
A general expectation prevailed. Luckily, Miss Fitch was not nervous.
She had that best of all gifts for teaching,--calmness; and she
understood her pupils and their ways, and had sympathy with them. She
knew how hard it is for feet with the dance of youth in them to keep
still for three long hours on a June morning; and there was a
pleasant, roguish look in her face as she laid her hand on the bell,
and, meeting the twenty-two pairs of expectant eyes which were fixed
on hers, rang it--dear Miss Fitch--actually a minute and a half before
the time.

At the first tinkle, like arrows dismissed from the bow-string, two
girls belonging to the older class jumped from their seats and flew,
ahead of all the rest, into the entry, where hung the hats and caps of
the school, and their dinner-baskets. One seized a pink sun-bonnet
from its nail, the other a Shaker-scoop with a deep green cape; each
possessed herself of a small tin pail, and just as the little crowd
swarmed into the passage, they hurried out on the green, in the middle
of which the schoolhouse stood. It was a very small green, shaped like
a triangle, with half a dozen trees growing upon it; but

"Little things are great to little men,"

you know, and to Miss Fitch's little men and women "the Green" had all
the importance and excitement of a park. Each one of the trees which
stood upon it possessed a name of its own. Every crotch and branch in
them was known to the boys and the most daring among the girls; each
had been the scene of games and adventures without number. "The
Castle," a low spreading oak with wide, horizontal branches, had been
the favorite tree for fights. Half the boys would garrison the boughs,
the other half, scrambling from below and clutching and tugging, would
take the part of besiegers, and it had been great fun all round. But
alas, for that "had been!" Ever since one unlucky day, when Luther
Bradley, as King Charles, had been captured five boughs up by Cromwell
and his soldiers, and his ankle badly sprained in the process, Miss
Fitch had ruled that "The Castle" should be used for fighting purposes
no longer. The boys might climb it, but they must not call t