vidently the relics of some of old
Blunderbuss's wives, whom he had imprisoned in the wall and left to perish
there!'"

Myra shut the book with a slam, and, groping beneath the seat of the
summer-house, found and handed to Clem the torso of an old rag doll,
which, because it might be thrown against a window without breaking the
glass, served as their wonted substitute for the Tinker's hammer.

"O-oh!" cried Myra, clutching at Clem and drawing him back from the sudden
apparition in the window; and so for a dozen seconds she and Hester stared
at one another.

"Good-morning!"

"Good-morning!" Myra hesitated a moment. "Though I don't know who you
are. Oh, but yes I do! You're the new teacher, and it's no use your
pretending."

"Am I pretending?" asked Hester.

"Yes; but I know what to do." The child nodded her head defiantly and
made an elaborate sign of the cross, first over Clem and then upon the
front of her own bodice. "That's against witches," she announced.

"Please don't take me for a witch!" It was absurd, but really Hester
began to wonder where these misunderstandings would end. The look, too,
on the boy's face puzzled her.

"I always wondered," said Myra, unmoved, "if the new teacher would turn
out a witch. Witches always start by making themselves into young and
beautiful ladies; that's their trick. Whoever heard of a teacher being a
young and beautiful lady?"

"Well," answered Hester, between a sigh and a smile, "a compliment's a
compliment, however it comes. I am the witch, then; and who may you be?--
Hansel and Grethel, I suppose? I don't think, though, that Hansel really
believes me a witch, by the way he's looking at me."

"He isn't looking at you at all. Come away, Clem!" She led the boy away
by the hand, which he gave to her obediently, but left him when half-way
across the turf and came swiftly back. "He wasn't looking at you.
He's blind."

"Ah, poor child! I am sorry--please tell me your name, and believe that I
am sorry."

"If you were sorry, you'd go away, and not come teaching here."
Myra delivered this Parthian shaft over her shoulder as she walked off.
At the same moment Hester heard a door open in the room behind her, and
Parson Endicott came forth from the counting-house.

"Ah--er--Miss Marvin "--He paused with a lift of his eyebrows at the sight
of the rag doll in Hester's hand. She, on her part, felt a sudden
hysterical desire to laugh wildly.

"It--it isn't