, which in the capriciousness of
her passionate nature the next moment filled with tears. Then dropping
on her knees she caught the master's bitten hand and covered it with
tears and kisses. But he quietly disengaged it and lifted her to her
seat. There was a sniffling sound among the benches, which, however,
quickly subsided as he glanced around the room, and the incident ended.

Regularly thereafter she took her prayer book back at recess and
disappeared with the children, finding, as he afterwards learned, a seat
under a secluded buckeye tree, where she was not disturbed by them until
her orisons were concluded. The children must have remained loyal to
some command of hers, for the incident and this custom were never told
out of school, and the master did not consider it his duty to inform Mr.
or Mrs. Hoover. If the child could recognize some check--even if it were
deemed by some a superstitious one--over her capricious and precocious
nature, why should he interfere?

One day at recess he presently became conscious of the ceasing of those
small voices in the woods around the schoolhouse, which were always
as familiar and pleasant to him in his seclusion as the song of their
playfellows--the birds themselves. The continued silence at last
awakened his concern and curiosity. He had seldom intruded upon or
participated in their games or amusements, remembering when a boy
himself the heavy incompatibility of the best intentioned adult intruder
to even the most hypocritically polite child at such a moment. A sense
of duty, however, impelled him to step beyond the schoolhouse, where to
his astonishment he found the adjacent woods empty and soundless. He was
relieved, however, after penetrating its recesses, to hear the distant
sound of small applause and the unmistakable choking gasps of Johnny
Stidger's pocket accordion. Following the sound he came at last upon a
little hollow among the sycamores, where the children were disposed in
a ring, in the centre of which, with a handkerchief in each hand, Concha
the melancholy!--Concha the devout!--was dancing that most extravagant
feat of the fandango--the audacious sembicuaca!

Yet, in spite of her rude and uncertain accompaniment, she was dancing
it with a grace, precision, and lightness that was wonderful; in spite
of its doubtful poses and seductive languors she was dancing it with the
artless gayety and innocence--perhaps from the suggestion of her tiny
figure--of a mere