carried home to their
parents by the children, the result was an overwhelming interest in the
proceedings and personnel of the school by the whole district. People
had already called at the Hoover ranch to see Mrs. Hoover's pretty
adopted daughter. The master, on his way to the schoolroom that morning,
had found a few woodmen and charcoal burners lounging on the bridle
path that led from the main road. Two or three parents accompanied
their children to school, asserting they had just dropped in to see how
"Aramanta" or "Tommy" were "gettin' on." As the school began to assemble
several unfamiliar faces passed the windows or were boldly flattened
against the glass. The little schoolhouse had not seen such a gathering
since it had been borrowed for a political meeting in the previous
autumn. And the master noticed with some concern that many of the faces
were the same which he had seen uplifted to the glittering periods of
Colonel Starbottle, "the war horse of the Democracy."

For he could not shut his eyes to the fact that they came from no
mere curiosity to see the novel and bizarre; no appreciation of
mere picturesqueness or beauty; and alas! from no enthusiasm for the
progression of education. He knew the people among whom he had lived,
and he realized the fatal question of "color" had been raised in some
mysterious way by those Southwestern emigrants who had carried into this
"free state" their inherited prejudices. A few words convinced him that
the unhappy children had variously described the complexion of their new
fellow pupil, and it was believed that the "No'th'n" schoolmaster, aided
and abetted by "capital" in the person of Hiram Hoover, had introduced
either a "nigger wench," a "Chinese girl," or an "Injin baby" to the
same educational privileges as the "pure whites," and so contaminated
the sons of freemen in their very nests. He was able to reassure many
that the child was of Spanish origin, but a majority preferred the
evidence of their own senses, and lingered for that purpose. As the hour
for her appearance drew near and passed, he was seized with a sudden
fear that she might not come, that Mr. Hoover had been prevailed upon
by his compatriots, in view of the excitement, to withdraw her from the
school. But a faint cheer from the bridle path satisfied him, and the
next moment a little retinue swept by the window, and he understood.
The Hoovers had evidently determined to accent the Spanish character
of th