f you could have
known how confoundedly struck up I was when I went into the Ark that
night, you wouldn't think it so strange my standing staring there like a
fool. You see we fellows, picking up everything of interest down here to
amuse ourselves with, heard that there was a new school-teacher coming,
so we gave our imaginations free rein. We were laughing it over among
ourselves, and Smith said, 'she'd probably have hair like Rollin's,' and
Jake said 'she'd wear spectacles, and have a nose like the Clipper in
the _Three Fates_', and all that sort of thing. So I went up that night
to see, just for the deuce of it, and not to get the oars at all, and I
was deucedly well paid for it, too. In fact, Miss Hungerford," said the
fisherman, darting a keen glance at me from his laughing eyes, "I did go
up to scoff, but I remained to pray."

My ears had never been conscientiously closed to the voice of idle
praise, but with this, for some reason, I was not well pleased.

"Your attitude was certainly devotional," I answered, without haste.
"Your friend," I added, "must be something of a seer. Here are the
literal glasses!"

"Nonsense!" said Mr. Rollin, coloring slightly; "you know I didn't mean
that--just being a little near-sighted. I said spectacles. Besides," and
the fisherman looked me full and unblushingly in the face--"if I
had such eyes as yours, by Jove, I wouldn't mind whether I could see
anything out of 'em or not!"

"You will hardly expect me to thank you for that," I murmured, with a
sincere flash of indignation; not that I was unmindful of certain
reckless moods of old, when I had found it not impossible to listen, even
with calmness, to vain demonstrations of this sort, but I felt that I was
a different person now, in a different sphere of action.

Mr. Rollin knew nothing of me except that I was the teacher of the
Wallencamp school--a doubtful position to his mind.

He fancied that he might "pick me up," to "amuse" himself with, I
thought, and at the reflection I felt an angry glow rising from heart to
cheek.

Meanwhile the fisherman gnawed his moustache ruefully. This idle
worldling could assume, occasionally, a whimsical helplessness of
expression, with an air of aggrieved and childlike candor, somewhat
baffling to the stern designs of justice.

"Now I've offended you," he began, exchanging his tone of easy
nonchalance for one of slow and awkward dejection. "And you think I've
had the impudence--well, if