eighbourhoods, and here they are,
still travelling, and going now, it may be, to the remotest corners
of the earth. The big boys talked about this matter of lying and
declared the teacher was right.

"There's Tunk Hosely," said Sam Price. "Nobody'd take his word for
nuthin'."

"'Less he was t' say he was a fool out an' out," another boy
suggested.

"Dunno as I'd b'lieve him then," said Sam. "Fer I'd begin t' think
he knew suthin'."

A little girl came in, crying, one day.

"What is the trouble?" said the teacher, tenderly, as he leaned
over and put his arm around her.

"My father is sick," said the child, sobbing.

"Very sick?" the teacher inquired.

For a moment she could not answer, but stood shaken with sobs.

"The doctor says he can't live," said she, brokenly.

A solemn stillness fell in the little schoolroom. The teacher
lifted the child and held her close to his broad breast a moment.

"Be brave, little girl," said he, patting her head gently.
"Doctors don't always know. He may be better to-morrow."

He took the child to her seat, and sat beside her and whispered a
moment, his mouth close to her ear. And what he said, none knew,
save the girl herself, who ceased to cry in a moment but never
ceased to remember it.

A long time he sat, with his arm around her, questioning the
classes. He seemed to have taken his place between her and the
dark shadow.

Joe Beach had been making poor headway in arithmetic.

"I'll come over this evening, and we'll see what's the trouble.
It's all very easy," the teacher said.

He worked three hours with the young man that evening, and filled
him with high ambition after hauling him out of his difficulty.

But of all difficulties the teacher had to deal with, Polly Vaughn
was the greatest. She was nearly perfect in all her studies, but a
little mischievous and very dear to him. "Pretty;" that is one
thing all said of her there in Faraway, and they said also with a
bitter twang that she loved to lie abed and read novels. To Sidney
Trove the word "pretty" was inadequate. As to lying abed and
reading novels, he was free to say that he believed in it.

"We get very indignant about slavery in the south," he used to say;
"but how about slavery on the northern farms? I know people who
rise at cock-crow and strain their sinews in heavy toil the
livelong day, and spend the Sabbath trembling in the lonely shadow
of the Valley of Death. I know a man who whipp