lighted,
for it was a fairy story after all--and that when a strange messenger
brought them the news of Christ's crucifixion, they wept, and their
tears, as they fell to the ground, were turned into tiny crosses of
stone. Even the Indians had some queer feeling about them, and for a
long, long time people who found them had used them as charms to bring
good luck and ward off harm.

"And that's for you," he said, "because you've been such a good little
girl and have studied so hard. School's most over now and I reckon
you'll be right glad to get home again."

June made no answer, but at the gate she looked suddenly up at him.

"Have you got one, too?" she asked, and she seemed much disturbed when
Hale shook his head.

"Well, I'LL git--GET--you one--some day."

"All right," laughed Hale.

There was again something strange in her manner as she turned suddenly
from him, and what it meant he was soon to learn. It was the last
week of school and Hale had just come down from the woods behind the
school-house at "little recess-time" in the afternoon. The children were
playing games outside the gate, and Bob and Miss Anne and the little
Professor were leaning on the fence watching them. The little man raised
his hand to halt Hale on the plank sidewalk.

"I've been wanting to see you," he said in his dreamy, abstracted way.
"You prophesied, you know, that I should be proud of your little protege
some day, and I am indeed. She is the most remarkable pupil I've yet
seen here, and I have about come to the conclusion that there is no
quicker native intelligence in our country than you shall find in the
children of these mountaineers and--"

Miss Anne was gazing at the children with an expression that turned
Hale's eyes that way, and the Professor checked his harangue. Something
had happened. They had been playing "Ring Around the Rosy" and June had
been caught. She stood scarlet and tense and the cry was:

"Who's your beau--who's your beau?"

And still she stood with tight lips--flushing.

"You got to tell--you got to tell!"

The mountain boy, Cal Heaton, was grinning with fatuous consciousness,
and even Bob put his hands in his pockets and took on an uneasy smile.

"Who's your beau?" came the chorus again.

The lips opened almost in a whisper, but all could hear:

"Jack!"

"Jack who?" But June looked around and saw the four at the gate. Almost
staggering, she broke from the crowd and, with one forearm across her