to his. The blood surged up into his cheek, and the light into his
eyes, and he murmured:

"That is worth being ill for, Kate. I would be ill again for that."

She could only say _hush_, and then kiss him again, lest he should be
hurt, thinking with a soundless sigh:

"I shall be forced to marry him some day."

And he was neither her own virgin-born ideal; nor had his presence the
power to beget another and truer ideal in her brain.

From that day he made rapid progress. Kate would read to him for hours;
and when for love and weakness--an ill-matched pair--he could not look
in her face any more, he would yet lie and listen, till her voice
filled him with repose, and he slept in music.

CHAPTER LVIII.

On the Monday morning after his terrible failure Mr Malison felt almost
too ill to go to the school. But he knew that if he gave in he must
leave the place. And he had a good deal of that courage which enables a
man to front the inevitable, and reap, against his liking, the benefits
that spring from every fate steadfastly encountered. So he went,
keeping a calm exterior over the shame and mortification that burned
and writhed within him. He prayed the morning prayer, falteringly but
fluently; called up the Bible-class; corrected their blunders with an
effort over himself which imparted its sternness to the tone of the
correction and made him seem oblivious of his own, though in truth the
hardest task he had ever had was to find fault that Monday; in short,
did everything as usual, except bring out the _tag_. How could he
punish failure who had himself so shamefully failed in the sight of
them all? And, to the praise of Glamerton be it recorded, never had
there been a quieter day, one of less defiance of law, than that day of
the master's humiliation. In the afternoon Andrew Truffey laid a
splendid bunch of cottage-flowers on his desk, and the next morning it
was so crowded with offerings of the same sort that he had quite a
screen behind which to conceal his emotion.

Wonderful, let me say once more, is the divine revenge! The children
would wipe away the humiliation of their tyrant. His desk, the symbol
of merciless law, the ark containing no pot of manna, only the rod that
never budded, became an altar heaped with offerings, behind which the
shamed divinity bowed his head and acknowledged a power greater than
that of stripes--overcome by his boys, who hated spelling and figures,
hated yet more the Sh