her, and
was kneeling, her head bowed and her hands crossed upon her breast. The
audience went into a rapture of applause as the curtain came suddenly
down; but Myrtle had forgotten all but the dread peril she had just
passed, and was thanking God that his angel--her own protecting spirit,
as it seemed to her had stayed the arm which a passion such as her
nature had never known, such as she believed was alien to her truest
self, had lifted with deadliest purpose. She alone knew how extreme the
danger had been. "She meant to scare her,--that 's all," they said. But
Myrtle tore the eagle's feathers from her hair, and stripped off her
colored beads, and threw off her painted robe. The metempsychosis was
far too real for her to let her wear the semblance of the savage from
whom, as she believed, had come the lawless impulse at the thought of
which her soul recoiled in horror.

"Pocahontas has got a horrid headache," the managing young ladies gave
it out, "and can't come to time for the last tableau." So this all
passed over, not only without loss of credit to Myrtle, but with no
small addition to her local fame,--for it must have been acting; "and
was n't it stunning to see her with that knife, looking as if she was
going to stab Bells, or to scalp her, or something?"

As Master Gridley had predicted, and as is the case commonly with
new-comers at colleges and schools, Myrtle had come first in contact
with those who were least agreeable to meet. The low-bred youth who
amuse themselves with scurvy tricks on freshmen, and the vulgar girls
who try to show off their gentility to those whom they think less
important than themselves, are exceptions in every institution; but they
make themselves odiously prominent before the quiet and modest young
people have had time to gain the new scholar's confidence. Myrtle found
friends in due time, some of them daughters of rich people, some poor
girls, who came with the same sincerity of purpose as herself. But
not one was her match in the facility of acquiring knowledge. Not one
promised to make such a mark in society, if she found an opening into
its loftier circles. She was by no means ignorant of her natural gifts,
and she cultivated them with the ambition which would not let her rest.

During her stay at the great school, she made but one visit to
Oxbow Village. She did not try to startle the good people with her
accomplishments, but they were surprised at the change which had
take