gone back to Happy Valley to teach again. Now
he would see her once more and his hopes were high. Outside he heard the
creaking of wheels. A big spring wagon loaded with Christmas things drew
up in front of his door and amidst them sat the superintendent's daughter
and two girl friends, who shouted cheery greetings to him. He raised his
eyes and high above saw the muffled figure of the marquise coming through
the snowy bushes down the trail. Behind her rode a man with a crutch
across his saddle-bows--Pleasant Trouble, self-made bodyguard to the
little teacher: nowhere could she go without him at her heels. Pleasant
grinned, and the faces of the lovers, suddenly suffused, made their story
quite plain. The doctor lifted her from her horse and helped her into the
wagon, to meet three pairs of mischievous eyes, so that quite gruffly for
him, he said:

"On your way now--and hustle!"

A black-snake whip cracked and up Pigeon the wagon bumped with
the doctor, his two friends, and Pleasant Trouble on horseback
alongside; past the long batteries of coke-ovens with grinning
darkies, coke-pullers, and loaders idling about them; up the
rough road through lanes of snow-covered rhododendrons winding
among tall oaks, chestnuts, and hemlocks; through circles and
arrows of gold with which the sun splashed the white earth--every
cabin that they passed tenantless, for the inmates had gone ahead
long ago--and on to the little schoolhouse that sat on a tiny
plateau in a small clearing, with snow-tufted bushes of laurel
on every side and snowy mountains rising on either hand.

The door was wide open and smoke was curling from the chimney. A few
horses and mules were hitched to the bushes near by. Men, boys, and
dogs were gathered around a big fire in front of the building; and in
a minute women, children, and more dogs poured out of the schoolhouse
to watch the coming cavalcade. Since sunrise the motley group had been
waiting there, and the tender heart of the little marquise began to
ache: the women thinly clad in dresses of worsted or dark calico, and
a shawl or short jacket or man's coat, with a sunbonnet or "fascinator"
on their heads, and men's shoes on their feet--the older ones stooped
and thin, the younger ones carrying babies, and all with weather-beaten
faces and bared hands; the men and boys without overcoats, their coarse
shirts unbuttoned, their necks and upper chests bared to the biting cold,
their hands thrust in their pock