I could; "come home
with teacher, now. Teacher will lead you, all the way."

For answer, the child's head fell heavily on one side. I tried to take
her in my arms, but she was very heavy. I found one of the small boys
lingering outside the school-house and sent him for Bessie's father.

I shall never forget the look with which Captain Sartell lifted his baby
in his arms. He had seven other children; he was a poor man, a
Wallencamper, but one would have thought him a king, and that the only
hope of his line lay treasured in the mass of flaxen curls pressed
against his shoulder, as he carried her home.

The next morning, early, Captain Sartell appeared at the Ark with a
blanched face. Bess had been growing worse, he said. They feared it was a
fever. He was going to West Wallen for a doctor. "She thinks," he
continued, with absolute white bewilderment on his features, "that she's
in school all the while, and it's a gettin' late, and the teacher ain't
there, and so she keeps a callin' for the teacher; and I wouldn't ask ye
to go up, teacher, if you was anyways afeard, but it 'ud break your heart
to hear her."

For one of my years, I knew singularly little, either of sickness or
death, so I was the more readily susceptible to the slight disrespect the
Captain seemed to have cast on my wisdom and fortitude.

"Certainly I will go and see her," I said; "why should I be afraid?"

"I was only thinkin' it was fair to say," said the Captain; "she was took
so sudden and so violent like, it might be--might be--suthin'--suthin'
kitchin', perhaps. They was a case or two o' scarlet fever up to Wallen,
but she wasn't exposed no way that we know on. She wasn't exposed."

The Captain, regarding me intently, repeated the words, thrusting his
neck out with a pitiful gulp, his hand on the latch. Observing him, the
expression of my face changed; he groaned as he went out, closing the
door silently.

My first impulse then was to pack my trunk and start for home, but the
wailing of Mrs. Philander, and of the other women who had followed the
Captain in, lamenting one with another in an agony of helpless fear,
appealed to my courage and presence of mind, and had a strangely
sustaining and quieting effect upon me. I suggested after a few moments'
reflection, that very likely the case was not so bad as Captain Sartell
supposed. I determined to have no school that day, and advised the women
what they should do, in case their children had bee