ts "schoolmanse." He would have rated the new
quite as high as the old.

From the brow of the promontory, a light concrete bridge took the pretty
little gorge in the leap of a single arch, and landed the eye at the
bottom of the front yard of the schoolhouse. Thus the new institution of
life was in full view of the schoolmanse veranda, and yet shut off from it
by the dry moat of the brook and its tiny meadow of blue-grass.

Across the road was the creamery, with its businesslike unloading
platform, and its addition in process of construction for the reception of
the machinery for the cooperative laundry. Not far from the creamery, and
also across the road, stood the blacksmith and wheelwright shop. Still
farther down the stream were the barn, poultry house, pens, hutches and
yards of the little farm--small, economically made, and unpretentious, as
were all the buildings save the schoolhouse itself, which was builded for
the future.

And even the schoolhouse, when one thinks of the uses to which it was to
be put--kitchen, nursery, kindergarten, banquet-hall, theater,
moving-picture hall, classrooms, manual training rooms, laboratory and
counting-room and what-not, was wonderfully small--Colonel Woodruff said
far too small--though it was necessarily so large as to be rather
astonishing to the unexpectant passer-by.

The unexpectant passer-by this May day, however, would have been
especially struck by the number of motor-cars, buggies and surreys parked
in the yard back of the creamery, along the roadside, and by the driveway
running to the schoolhouse. People in numbers had arrived by five o'clock
in the afternoon, and were still coming. They strolled about the place,
examining the buildings and grounds, and talking with the blacksmith and
the butter-maker, gradually drawing into the schoolhouse like a swarm of
bees into a hive selected by the queen. None of them, however, went across
the concrete bridge to the schoolmanse, save Mrs. Simms, who crossed,
consulted with Mrs. Irwin about the shrubbery and flowers, and went back
to Buddie and Jinnie, who were good children but natchally couldn't be
trusted with so many other young ones withouten some watchin'.

"They're coming! They're coming!"

This was the cry borne to the people in and about the schoolhouse by that
Hans Hansen who would be called Hans Nilsen. Hans had been to the top of
the little hill and had a look toward town. Like a crew manning the
rigging, or a