ing high and softly
as if not yet clear of insecure and engulfing ground.

The silence still continuing, the master began mechanically to look
over the desks for forgotten or mislaid articles, and to rearrange
the pupils' books and copies. A few heartsease gathered by the devoted
Octavia Dean, neatly tied with a black thread and regularly left in the
inkstand cavity of Rupert's desk, were still lying on the floor where
they had been always hurled with equal regularity by that disdainful
Adonis. Picking up a slate from under a bench, his attention was
attracted by a forgotten cartoon on the reverse side. Mr. Ford at once
recognized it as the work of that youthful but eminent caricaturist,
Johnny Filgee. Broad in treatment, comprehensive in subject, liberal
in detail and slate-pencil--it represented Uncle Ben lying on the floor
with a book in his hand, tyrannized over by Rupert Filgee and regarded
in a striking profile of two features by Cressy McKinstry. The
daring realism of introducing the names of each character on their
legs--perhaps ideally enlarged for that purpose--left no doubt of their
identity. Equally daring but no less effective was the rendering of
a limited but dramatic conversation between the parties by the aid of
emotional balloons attached to their mouths like a visible gulp bearing
the respective legends: "I luv you," "O my," and "You git!"

The master was for a moment startled at this unlooked-for but graphic
testimony to the fact that Uncle Ben's visits to the school were
not only known but commented upon. The small eyes of those youthful
observers had been keener than his own. He had again been stupidly
deceived, in spite of his efforts. Love, albeit deficient in features
and wearing an improperly short bell-shaped frock, had boldly re-entered
the peaceful school, and disturbing complications on abnormal legs were
following at its heels.

CHAPTER V.

While this simple pastoral life was centred around the school-house in
the clearing, broken only by an occasional warning pistol-shot in the
direction of the Harrison-McKinstry boundaries, the more business part
of Indian Spring was overtaken by one of those spasms of enterprise
peculiar to all Californian mining settlements. The opening of the
Eureka Ditch and the extension of stagecoach communication from Big
Bluff were events of no small importance, and were celebrated on the
same day. The double occasion overtaxing even the fluent rhetor