th. So I did not look up when they stopped at my
side, or until a pleasant voice said:

"Why you look quite romantic, my dear."

Then I saw Miss Olever, the head teacher, familiarly called "Sissy
Jane." In that real and beautiful presence Miss Fitzallen retired to her
old place, and oh, the mortification she left behind her! I looked up, a
detected criminal, into the face of her who had brought to me this
humiliation, and took _her_ for a model. My folly did not prevent our
being sincere friends during all her earnest and beautiful life.

She passed on, and I got back to the Bee-hive, when I disposed of my
curls, and never again played heroine.

CHAPTER V.

LOSE MY BROTHER.--AGE, 12-15.

Measured by the calendar, my boarding-school life was six weeks; but
measured by its pleasant memories, it was as many years. Mother wrote
for me to come home; and in going I saw, by sunlight, the scene of our
adventure that dark night going out. It was a lovely valley, walled in
by steep, wooded hills. Two ravines joined, bringing each its
contribution of running water, and pouring it into the larger stream of
the larger valley--a veritable "meeting of the waters"--in all of
nature's work, beautiful exceedingly.

The house, which stood in the center of a large, green meadow, through
which the road ran, was built in two parts, of hewn logs, with one great
stone chimney on the outside, protected by an overshot in the roof, but
that one in which the log-heap burned that night was inside. One end had
been an Indian fort when Gen. Braddock tried to reach Fort Pitt by that
road. The other end and stone barn had been built by its present
proprietor. A log mill, the oldest in Allegheny county, stood below the
barn, and to it the French soldiers had come for meal from Fort
Duquesne. The stream crossed by the bridge was the mill-race, and the
waterfall made by the waste-gate. It was the homestead of a soldier of
the Revolution, one of Washington's lieutenants--the old man we had
seen. The woman was his second wife. They had a numerous family, and an
unpronounceable name.

At home I learned that, on account of a cough, I had been the object of
a generous conspiracy between mother and Mrs. Olever, and had been
brought home because I was worse. Our doctors said I was in the first
stage of consumption, that Elizabeth was to reach that point early in
life, and that our only hope lay in plenty of calomel. Mother had lost
her husband an