committee!" Mr. Ives fairly shrieked the words in his
astonishment.

"I tried to speak plainly," said Miss Lucretia. "Who are on that
committee?"

"Ezra Graves," said Mr. Ives, as though mechanically compelled, for his
head was spinning round. "Ezra Graves always has run it, until now. But
he's in the town hall."

"What's he doing there?"

Mr. Ives was no fool. Some inkling of the facts began to shoot through
his brain, and he saw his chance.

"He called a mass meeting to protest against the dismissal of a teacher."

"Gamaliel," said Miss Lucretia, "you will conduct me to that meeting. I
will get my cloak."

Mr. Ives wasted no time in the interval, and he fairly ran out into the
office. Miss Lucretia Penniman was in town, and would attend the mass
meeting. Now, indeed, it was to be a mass meeting. Away flew the tidings,
broadcast, and people threw off their carpet slippers and dressing gowns,
and some who had gone to bed got up again. Mr. Dodd heard it, and changed
his shoes three times, and his intentions three times three. Should he
go, or should he not? Already he heard in imagination the first distant
note of the populace, and he was not of the metal to defend a Bastille or
a Louvre for his royal master with the last drop of his blood.

In the meantime Gamaliel Ives was conducting Miss Lucretia toward, the
town hall, and speaking in no measured tones of indignation of the
cringing, truckling qualities of that very Mr. Dodd. The injustice to
Miss Wetherell, which Mr. Ives explained as well as he could, made his
blood boil: so he declared.

And note we are back again at the meeting, when the judge, with his hand
on his Adam's apple, is pronouncing the word "gift." Mr. Ives is
triumphantly marching down the aisle, escorting the celebrity of Brampton
to the platform, and quite aware of the heart burnings of his
fellow-citizens on the benches. And Miss Lucretia, with that stern
composure with which celebrities accept public situations, follows up the
steps as of right and takes the chair he assigns her beside the chairman.
The judge, still grasping his Adam's apple, stares at the newcomer in
amazement, and recognizes her in spite of the years, and trembles. Miss
Lucretia Penniman! Blucher was not more welcome to Wellington, or
Lafayette to Washington, than was Miss Lucretia to Ezra Graves as he
turned his back on the audience and bowed to her deferentially. Then he
turned again, cleared his throat once more t