ed by Billy with all enthusiasm. But
the center of the buzz was down at Mother Spurlock's Little House, where
Mr. Goodloe daily, and it seemed almost hourly, drilled the children for
the ceremonial of the opening of their house of learning across the way
from the Little House by the Road. Only echoes of the orgies reached the
outside, and gossip ran high in the Settlement as well as the Town at
the fragments that the delighted scions brought home, of curious folk
dances mixed with fragments of weird tunes.

"Sure, a minister of the gospel to teach me Mikey to stand on one leg
and spin around on the other with his hands over his head is a quare
thing, but the Riverend Goodloe is no ordinary man," said Mrs. Burns to
Mother Spurlock, who answered:

"You can trust him, Mrs. Burns, even with Mikey's legs."

And during all the long weeks of activity not once did I have a word
alone with the Harpeth Jaguar. We met constantly at dinner at the tables
of our friends and he came and went at the Poplars with the same freedom
that Nickols enjoyed. He was long hours in the library with father, and
somehow I felt that he was strengthening the structure that he had
builded on the ruined foundation and something passionate rose in my
heart and filled it with pain every time I heard his ringing laugh come
from the library table, accompanied by father's booming chuckle. Also,
he worked early and late in the garden with Nickols and the young man
from White Plains, and I saw that Nickols' artistic ideas flowed at top
speed when Gregory Goodloe was standing by.

It was the same thing over at the new schoolhouse. Mr. Todd and the men
worked miracles with their stone and mortar and wood and iron when he
was standing by or lending a hand. The school was built partly of stone
like the chapel and partly of old purple-pink brick like Mother
Spurlock's Little House, and it was beamed with heavy timbers. It was
roofed with heavy colonial clapboards which made it look as if it had
already stood a century before the floors were laid or the very modern
desks installed. It was built to house increasing generations, though
only about fifty children would open its portals of education.

"It speaks of education de luxe, doesn't it?" Billy asked as Nell and
Harriet and I stood with him and Nickols and the parson watching Mr.
Todd directing the men in screwing down the desks just a few days before
the opening.

"There is scarcely a village in England t