shold. A slight disturbance which followed his intrusion
showed the value of that precaution, and the fact that the room had been
already used for various private and peaceful gatherings of animated
nature. An irregular attendance of yellow-birds and squirrels dismissed
themselves hurriedly through the broken floor and windows, but a golden
lizard, stiffened suddenly into stony fright on the edge of an
open arithmetic, touched the heart of the master so strongly by its
resemblance to some kept-in and forgotten scholar who had succumbed over
the task he could not accomplish, that he was seized with compunction.

Recovering himself, and re-establishing, as it were, the decorous
discipline of the room by clapping his hands and saying "Sho!" he passed
up the narrow aisle of benches, replacing the forgotten arithmetic, and
picking up from the desks here and there certain fragmentary pieces of
plaster and crumbling wood that had fallen from the ceiling, as if
this grove of Academus had been shedding its leaves overnight. When he
reached his own desk he lifted the lid and remained for some moments
motionless, gazing into it. His apparent meditation however was simply
the combined reflection of his own features in a small pocket-mirror in
its recesses and a perplexing doubt in his mind whether the sacrifice of
his budding moustache was not essential to the professional austerity
of his countenance. But he was presently aware of the sound of small
voices, light cries, and brief laughter scattered at vague and remote
distances from the schoolhouse--not unlike the birds and squirrels he
had just dispossessed. He recognized by these signs that it was nine
o'clock, and his scholars were assembling.

They came in their usual desultory fashion--the fashion of country
school-children the world over--irregularly, spasmodically, and always
as if accidentally; a few hand-in-hand, others driven ahead of or
dropped behind their elders; some in straggling groups more or less
coherent and at times only connected by far-off intermediate voices
scattered on a space of half a mile, but never quite alone; always
preoccupied by something else than the actual business on hand;
appearing suddenly from ditches, behind trunks, and between fence-rails;
cropping up in unexpected places along the road after vague and
purposeless detours--seemingly going anywhere and everywhere but to
school! So unlooked-for, in fact, was their final arrival that the
mas