such moment to himself, beginning, as before, 'Dear
Madam,' and doing his best to follow the many instructions which the
faithful Mrs. Sims had given him. It was a curious specimen of
literature, in which a truly elegant mind and warm heart were veiled,
but not hidden, by an embarrassed attempt at conventional phrases--a
letter that most women would laugh at, and that the best women would
reverence. He addressed that envelope too, and sealed the notes and sent
away the boys.

There was no sleep for the schoolmaster that night. With folded arms he
paced his room in restless misery. Now that the die was cast, the ideal
Miss Blakely faded from his mind; he felt instinctively that she was
mythical. He saw clearly that he had forfeited the best possibilities of
life for the sake of temporary convenience, that he had sold his
birthright for a mess of pottage.

The long night passed at length, as all nights pass. The sun rose over
purple hills to glow upon the spring-stirred forest and to send golden
shafts deep down into the clear heart of lake and stream. The fallen
beauty of past woodland summers had tinged the water till it glowed like
nut-brown wine; so brown it was that the pools of the river, where it
swirled and rushed past the schoolhouse bend, seemed to greet the sun
with the soft dark glances of fawn-eyed water-sprites. The glorious sky,
the tender colours of the budding wood, the very dandelions on the
untrimmed bank, contrived their hues to accord and rejoice with the
laughing water, and the birds swelled out its song. In the rapture of
spring and of morning there was no echo of grief; for the unswerving law
of nature, moving through the years, had set each thing in its right
home. It is only the perplexed soul that is forced to choose its own way
and suffer from the choice, and the song of our life is but set to the
accompaniment of a sad creed if we may not trust that, above our human
wills, there is a Power able to overrule the mistakes of true hearts, to
lead the blind by unseen paths, and save the simple from their own
simplicity.

Very early in the morning the schoolmaster, haggard and worn, slipped
out of his own door to refresh himself in the sunlight that gleamed down
upon his bit of green through the budding willow trees that grew by the
river-side. He stood awhile under the bending boughs, watching the full
stream as it tossed its spray into the lap of the flower-fringed shore.
He looked, as he stoo