ial than these ignorant but
eager young people. The work of instruction was simple enough, for most
of the pupils began with the alphabet, which they acquired from
Webster's blue-backed spelling-book, the palladium of Southern
education at that epoch. The much abused carpet-baggers had put the
spelling-book within reach of every child of school age in North
Carolina,--a fact which is often overlooked when the carpet-baggers are
held up to public odium. Even the devil should have his due, and is
not so black as he is painted.

At the time when she learned that Tryon lived in the neighborhood, Rena
had already been subjected for several weeks to a trying ordeal. Wain
had begun to persecute her with marked attentions. She had at first
gone to board at his house,--or, by courtesy, with his mother. For a
week or two she had considered his attentions in no other light than
those of a member of the school committee sharing her own zeal and
interested in seeing the school successfully carried on. In this
character Wain had driven her to the town for her examination; he had
busied himself about putting the schoolhouse in order, and in various
matters affecting the conduct of the school. He had jocularly offered
to come and whip the children for her, and had found it convenient to
drop in occasionally, ostensibly to see what progress the work was
making.

"Dese child'en," he would observe sonorously, in the presence of the
school, "oughter be monst'ous glad ter have de chance er settin' under
yo' instruction, Miss Rena. I'm sho' eve'body in dis neighbo'hood
'preciates de priv'lege er havin' you in ou' mids'."

Though slightly embarrassing to the teacher, these public
demonstrations were endurable so long as they could be regarded as mere
official appreciation of her work. Sincerely in earnest about her
undertaking, she had plunged into it with all the intensity of a
serious nature which love had stirred to activity. A pessimist might
have sighed sadly or smiled cynically at the notion that a poor, weak
girl, with a dangerous beauty and a sensitive soul, and troubles enough
of her own, should hope to accomplish anything appreciable toward
lifting the black mass still floundering in the mud where slavery had
left it, and where emancipation had found it,--the mud in which, for
aught that could be seen to the contrary, her little feet, too, were
hopelessly entangled. It might have seemed like expecting a man to
lift him