class with two teachers, one for show and one for
work. He even seemed to see something comical in the situation, and
there was positive admiration in a remark he made to Mr. Murdoch:

"She's a true teacher. There's really only one teacher to that class.
She must have been born with a knack for it!"

Elder Holloway, with all his years and experience, had not understood
the case of Miss Glidden's class more perfectly than had one young
observer at the other end of the church. Jack Ogden could not see so
well as those great men in the pulpit, but then he could hear much and
surmise the rest.

"All those girls will stand by Molly!" he said to himself. "I hope it
won't be long before school's dismissed," he added.

He had reasons for this hope. He was a little late through lingering
to take a curious look at what was left of the fire. The street had a
littered look. The barns and stables were wide open, and deserted, for
the horses had been led to places of safety. There seemed to be an
impression that the hotel was half destroyed; but the damage had not
been very great.

A faint, thin film of blue was eddying along the ridgepole of the
kitchen addition. Jack noticed it, but did not know what it meant. A
more practiced observer would have known that, hidden from sight,
buried in the punk of the dry-rotted timber, was a vicious spark of
fire, stealthily eating its way through the punk of the resinous pine.

Jack paid little attention to the tiny smoke-wreath, but he was
compelled to pay some attention to the weather. It had been hot from
sunrise until noon, and the air had grown heavier since.

"I know what that haze means," said Jack to himself, as he looked
toward the Cocahutchie. "There's a thunderstorm coming by and by, and
nobody knows just when. I'll be on the lookout for it."

For this reason he was glad that he was compelled to find a seat not
far from the door of the church. Twice he went out to look at the sky,
and the second time he saw banks of lead-colored clouds forming on the
northwestern horizon. Returning he said to several of the boys near
the vestibule:

"You've just time to get home, if you don't want a ducking."

Each boy passed along the warning; and when the school stood up to sing
the last hymn, even the girls and the older people knew of the coming
storm. There was a brief silence before the first note of the organ,
and through that silence nearly everybody could catch the