sort described which was the pride of the boys in the Leavitt
district school. They had nailed boards across it to make a floor, and
the load that jumper carried on occasions was something wonderful. It
would sustain as many boys and girls as could be packed upon it.
Sometimes there came a need for strange devices as to getting on, and
then the mass of boys would make the journey with its perils, laid
criss-cross in layers, like cord-wood, four deep and very much alive and
apprehensive.

The Leavitt school was situated in the country, ten miles from the
nearest town, and those who attended it were the farmers' sons and
daughters. In winter the well-grown ones, those who had work to do in
summer, would appear among the pupils, and this winter Jack Burrows,
aged eighteen, was among the older boys. He was there, strong, hard
working at his books, a fine young animal, and it may be added of him
that he was there, in love, deeply and almost hopelessly. Among the
girls in attendance was one who was different from the rest, just as an
Alderney is different from a group of Devon heifers. She was no better,
but she was different, that was all. She had come from a town, Miss
Jennie Orton, aged seventeen, and she was spending the winter with the
family of her uncle. Her own people were neither better off nor counted
superior in any way to those she was now among, but she had a town way
with her, a certain something, and was to the boys a most attractive
creature. There was nothing wonderful about her--that is, there
wouldn't be to you or me--but she was a bright girl and a good one, and
she awed Jack Burrows. A girl of seventeen is ten years older than a boy
of eighteen, and in this case the added fact that the girl had lived in
town and the boy had not, but added to the natural disparity. Jack had
made some sturdy but shy advances which had been well enough
received--in her heart Jennie thought him an excessively fine
fellow--but being a male, and young, and lacking the sight which sees,
he failed to take this graciousness at its full value. He had ventured
to become her escort on the occasion of this sleigh ride or of that, but
when all were crowded together by twos in the big straw-carpeted box, on
the red bob-sleds, and the bells were jangling and the woods were
slipping by and the bright stars overhead seemed laughing at something
going on beneath them, his arm--to its shame be it said--had failed to
steal about her waist, n