e, and before passing it round for
inspection, held it between her trembling palms. "Here be all the nations
o' the earth, civilised and uncivilised; and here be I, Sarah Butson, with
no place upon it, after next Monday, to lay my head."

She looked up with fierce, tearless eyes, and looking up, caught sight of
Mr. Samuel Rosewarne in the doorway.

"Oh, good-morning, Mrs. Butson!" nodded Mr. Sam easily. "I looked in to
see if you'd collected your school-fees this week, as the law requires.
You are doing so, it seems?"

"Rosewarne--" Mrs. Butson stepped down from her platform, globe in hand.

"Eh? I beg your pardon?" But before the mischief in her eyes he turned
and fled.

She followed him to the door.

"Take _that_, you thievin' Pharisee!"

The globe missed his head by a few inches, and went flying down the
roadway toward the ferry. Aunt Butson strode back among her astonished
audience.

"That's my last word to _he_," she said, panting; "and here's my last to
you." She picked up her chalk, advanced to the blackboard, and wrote
rapidly, in bold, clear hand--

BLAST ALL EDUCATION!

"You may go, friends," said she. "I'd like to be alone, if you please."

CHAPTER XVII.

PETER BENNY'S DISMISSAL.

Although Master Calvin Rosewarne, by telling tales, first set the
persecution going against Nicky Vro, he did so without any special
malevolence. It was an instance of Satan's finding mischief for idle
hands. The child, in fact, had no playmates, and little to do; and
happening to pass Mrs. Trevarthen's cottage as her household stuff and
sticks of furniture were being removed in a hand-cart, he followed
downhill to the ferry to watch the transhipment.

Some minutes later, Mrs. Trevarthen, having locked her door for the
last time, laid the key under a geranium-pot on the window-sill.
There was no sentiment in her leave-taking. A few late blossoms showed on
the jasmine which, from a cutting planted by her in the year of Tom's
birth, had over-run and smothered the cottage to its very chimney.
Her Michaelmas daisies and perennial phloxes--flowers of her anxious
care--were in full bloom. But the old soul had no eyes for them, now at
the last, being flustered by the importance of her journey and the thought
of many things, hastily packed, which might take harm in crossing the
ferry. Mr. Toy (a neighbourly fellow with all his failings, and one of
that not innumerous class of men