elding.

It happened that upon this same afternoon Colonel May arrived, bringing
some of his guests to see the convent. He was held in very high esteem
by these nuns, although differing from their religious views, and if he
did not quite atone for this by the frequent intervals with which the
bounties of his farm added to their modest comfort, he did, at least,
merit their impersonal affection. So it followed that the good Mother,
being perplexed and sore in mind over her duty to the girl, led him
aside.

He was deeply affected by her story, and recalled the child who
suggested faint memories of toothsome berries. Conscious of the pressing
need for more schools in the rural districts of his State--especially in
the neighborhood of his own home--and spontaneously in sympathy with her
ambition, he so earnestly espoused her cause with promises to keep her
under his protection, that the last doubt vanished from the good woman's
eyes.

What the sisters had been unable to do for her, the generous Colonel
fully accomplished. She was taken away to a most excellent school and,
after five years, returned to him a thoroughly proficient young lady.
Graceful, possessing a finish and magnetism which her wild origin made
more peculiarly attractive, sympathetic, frank, normal, and exceedingly
good to look upon, she excelled even those hopes which he had built
during her absence. A fortnight later the quail and whip-poor-wills,
near the thicket where the wounded mountaineer's mare now stood, had
been startled by the rat-tat of hammers and the song of saws; and that
September she found herself, at nearly twenty-one, in possession of a
well equipped schoolhouse, whose fame spread far during this, its first
year of existence. But while her own years of study and acquiring
culture had charmingly toned the surface of her nature, the earlier
intensity, the freedom of thought and behavior which are the natural
heritage of those born in wild places, still simmered like a resting
volcano.

And now, as her handkerchief went mechanically from the pail to the
forehead of the wounded man, a shadowy procession of these thoughts
glided by in a fantastic panorama. In the stillness of the place ghosts
of the old life reached out and clasped hands with actualities of the
new; clasped hands, and danced, and arabesqued before her fancy until it
seemed as if her entire life were performing there upon the dusky floor.
If only her future could perform! S