nd look up at the solemn pines and
listen, awed by their majestic movement and the desolate loveliness all
around. At such time, if the thought of marriage came, she did not put
it aside with the light fancy that she wished still to remain free; she
longed, in the drear solitude, for some one to sympathise with her, some
one who could explain the meaning of the wordless thoughts that welled
up within her, the vague response of her heart to the mystery of
external beauty. Alas! among all her suitors there was not such a
friend.

There was no one else in the town who cared for country walks as Eelan
did--at least, no one but the schoolmaster. She met him occasionally,
walking far from home; he was a quaint, old-looking man, and she thought
he had a face like an angel's. She might have wished sometimes to stop
and speak to him, but when they met he always appeared to have his eyes
resting on the distant horizon, and his mind seemed wrapped in some
learned reverie, to the oblivion of outward things. The schoolmaster
lived in the schoolhouse on the bank of the curving river, a bit below
the waterfall. He took up his abode there a few months before Eelan Reid
came home from school. He had come from somewhere nearer the centres of
education--had been imported, so to speak, for the special use of Haven
Settlement, for the leading men of the place were a canny set and knew
the worth of books. His testimonials had told of a higher standard of
scholarship than was usual in such schools, and the keen Scots had
snapped at the chance and engaged him without an interview; but when he
arrived they had been grievously disappointed. He was a gentle,
unsophisticated man, shy as a girl, and absent-minded withal.

'Aweel, I'll not say but he'll do to put sums and writing into the
youngsters' heads and teach them to spout their poems; but he's not just
what I call a _man_.' This was the opinion which Macpherson, the portly
owner of the mill, had delivered to his friends.

'There's something lacking, I'm thinking,' said one; 'he's thirty-six
years old, and to see him driving his cow afield, you'd say he was
sixty, and him not sickly either.'

'I doubt he's getting far too high a salary,' said Macpherson solemnly.
'To pass examinations is all very well; but he's not got the grit in him
that I'd like to see.'

So they had called a school committee meeting, and suggested to the new
schoolmaster, as delicately as they could, that they were m