The New Assistant At Pine Clearing School

: Colonel Starbottle's Client And Other Stories

CHAPTER I.





The schoolmistress of Pine Clearing was taking a last look around her

schoolroom before leaving it for the day. She might have done so with

pride, for the schoolroom was considered a marvel of architectural

elegance by the citizens, and even to the ordinary observer was a

pretty, villa-like structure, with an open cupola and overhanging roof

of diamond-shaped shingles and a deep E izabethan porch. But it was

the monument of a fierce struggle between a newer civilization and a

barbarism of the old days, which had resulted in the clearing away of

the pines--and a few other things as incongruous to the new life and far

less innocent, though no less sincere. It had cost the community fifteen

thousand dollars, and the lives of two of its citizens.



Happily there was no stain of this on the clean white walls, the

beautifully-written gilt texts, or the shining blackboard that had

offered no record which could not be daily wiped away. And, certainly,

the last person in the world to suggest any reminiscences of its

belligerent foundation was the person of the schoolmistress. Mature,

thin, precise,--not pretty enough to have excited Homeric feuds, nor yet

so plain as to preclude certain soothing graces,--she was the widow of

a poor Congregational minister, and had been expressly imported from

San Francisco to squarely mark the issue between the regenerate and

unregenerate life. Low-voiced, gentlewomanly, with the pallor of

ill-health perhaps unduly accented by her mourning, which was still cut

modishly enough to show off her spare but good figure, she was

supposed to represent the model of pious, scholastic refinement. The

Opposition--sullen in ditches and at the doors of saloons, or in the

fields truculent as their own cattle--nevertheless had lowered their

crests and buttoned their coats over their revolutionary red shirts when

SHE went by.



As she was stepping from the threshold, she was suddenly confronted by

a brisk business-looking man, who was about to enter. "Just in time to

catch you, Mrs. Martin," he said hurriedly; then, quickly correcting his

manifest familiarity, he added: "I mean, I took the liberty of running

in here on my way to the stage office. That matter you spoke of is

all arranged. I talked it over with the other trustees, wrote to Sam

Barstow, and he's agreeable, and has sent somebody up, and," he rapidly

consulted his watch, "he ought to be here now; and I'm on my way to meet

him with the other trustees."



Mrs. Martin, who at once recognized her visitor as the Chairman of

the School Board, received the abrupt information with the slight

tremulousness, faint increase of color, and hurried breathing of a

nervous woman.



"But," she said, "it was only a SUGGESTION of mine, Mr. Sperry; I really

have no right to ask--I had no idea"--



"It's all right, ma'am,--never you mind. We put the case square to

Barstow. We allowed that the school was getting too large for you to

tackle,--I mean, you know, to superintend single-handed; and that these

Pike County boys they're running in on us are a little too big and

sassy for a lady like you to lasso and throw down--I mean, to sorter

control--don't you see? But, bless you, Sam Barstow saw it all in a

minit! He just jumped at it. I've got his letter here--hold on"--he

hastily produced a letter from his pocket, glanced ever it, suddenly

closed it again with embarrassed quickness, yet not so quickly but that

the woman's quicker eyes were caught, and nervously fascinated by the

expression "I'm d----d" in a large business hand--and said in awkward

haste, "No matter about reading it now--keep you too long--but he's

agreed all right, you know. Must go now--they'll be waiting. Only I

thought I'd drop in a-passin', to keep you posted;" and, taking off his

hat, he began to back from the porch.



"Is--is--this gentleman who is to assist me--a--a mature professional

man--or a--graduate?" hesitated Mrs. Martin, with a faint smile.



"Don't really know--I reckon Sam--Mr. Barstow--fixed that all right.

Must really go now;" and, still holding his hat in his hand as a polite

compromise for his undignified haste, he fairly ran off.



Arrived at the stage office, he found the two other trustees awaiting

him, and the still more tardy stage-coach. One, a large, smooth-faced,

portly man, was the Presbyterian minister; the other, of thinner and

more serious aspect, was a large mill-owner.



"I presume," said the Rev. Mr. Peaseley, slowly, "that as our good

brother Barstow, in the urgency of the occasion, has, to some

extent, anticipated OUR functions in engaging this assistant, he

is--a--a--satisfied with his capacity?"



"Sam knows what he's about," said the mill-owner cheerfully, "and as

he's regularly buckled down to the work here, and will go his bottom

dollar on it, you can safely leave things to him."



"He certainly has exhibited great zeal," said the reverend gentleman

patronizingly.



"Zeal," echoed Sperry enthusiastically, "zeal? Why, he runs Pine

Clearing as he runs his bank and his express company in Sacramento, and

he's as well posted as if he were here all the time. Why, look here;"

he nudged the mill-owner secretly, and, as the minister's back was

momentarily turned, pulled out the letter he had avoided reading to Mrs.

Martin, and pointed to a paragraph. "I'll be d----d," said the writer,

"but I'll have peace and quietness at Pine Clearing, if I have to wipe

out or make over the whole Pike County gang. Draw on me for a piano if

you think Mrs. Martin can work it. But don't say anything to Peaseley

first, or he'll want it changed for a harmonium, and that lets us in

for psalm-singing till you can't rest. Mind! I don't object to Church

influence--it's a good hold!--but you must run IT with other things

equal, and not let it run YOU. I've got the schoolhouse insured for

thirty thousand dollars--special rates too."



The mill-owner smiled. "Sam's head is level! But," he added, "he don't

say much about the new assistant he's sending."



"Only here," he says, "I reckon the man I send will do all round; for

Pike County has its claims as well as Boston."



"What does that mean?" asked the mill-owner.



"I reckon he means he don't want Pine Clearing to get too high-toned

any more than he wants it too low down. He's mighty square in his

averages--is Sam."



Here speculation was stopped by the rapid oncoming of the stage-coach

in all the impotent fury of a belated arrival. "Had to go round by

Montezuma to let off Jack Hill," curtly explained the driver, as he

swung himself from the box, and entered the hotel bar-room in company

with the new expressman, who had evidently taken Hill's place on the

box-seat. Autocratically indifferent to further inquiry, he called out

cheerfully: "Come along, boys, and hear this yer last new yarn about Sam

Barstow,--it's the biggest thing out." And in another moment the waiting

crowd, with glasses in their hands, were eagerly listening to the

repetition of the "yarn" from the new expressman, to the apparent

exclusion of other matters, mundane and practical.



Thus debarred from information, the three trustees could only watch



the passengers as they descended, and try to identify their expected

stranger. But in vain: the bulk of the passengers they already knew, the

others were ordinary miners and laborers; there was no indication of the

new assistant among them. Pending further inquiry they were obliged

to wait the conclusion of the expressman's humorous recital. This was

evidently a performance of some artistic merit, depending upon a capital

imitation of an Irishman, a German Jew, and another voice, which was

universally recognized and applauded as being "Sam's style all over!"

But for the presence of the minister, Sperry and the mill-owner would

have joined the enthusiastic auditors, and inwardly regretted the

respectable obligations of their official position.



When the story-teller had concluded amidst a general call for more

drinks, Sperry approached the driver. The latter recognizing him, turned

to his companion carelessly, said, "Here's one of 'em," and was going

away when Sperry stopped him.



"We were expecting a young man."



"Yes," said the driver, impatiently, "and there he is, I reckon."



"We don't mean the new expressman," said the minister, smiling blandly,

"but a young man who"--



"THAT ain't no new expressman," returned the driver in scornful

deprecation of his interlocutor's ignorance. "He only took Hill's

place from Montezuma. He's the new kid reviver and polisher for that

University you're runnin' here. I say--you fellers oughter get him to

tell you that story of Sam Barstow and the Chinaman. It'd limber you

fellers up to hear it."



"I fear there's some extraordinary mistake here," said Mr. Peaseley,

with a chilling Christian smile.



"Not a bit of it. He's got a letter from Sam for one of ye. Yere,

Charley--what's your name! Com yere. Yere's all yer three bosses waiting

for ye."



And the supposed expressman and late narrator of amusing stories came

forward and presented his credentials as the assistant teacher of Pine

Clearing.





CHAPTER II.





Even the practical Mr. Sperry was taken aback. The young man before him

was squarely built, with broad shoulders, and a certain air of muscular

activity. But his face, although good-humored, was remarkable for

offering not the slightest indication of studious preoccupation or

mental training. A large mouth, light blue eyes, a square jaw, the other

features being indistinctive--were immobile as a mask--except that,

unlike a mask, they seemed to actually reflect the vacuity of the mood

within, instead of concealing it. But as he saluted the trustees they

each had the same feeling that even this expression was imported and not

instinctive. His face was clean-shaven, and his hair cut so short as to

suggest that a wig of some kind was necessary to give it characteristic

or even ordinary human semblance. His manner, self-assured yet lacking

reality, and his dress of respectable cut and material, yet worn as if

it did not belong to him, completed a picture as unlike a student or

schoolmaster as could be possibly conceived.



Yet there was the letter in Mr. Peaseley's hands from Barstow,

introducing Mr. Charles Twing as the first assistant teacher in the Pine

Clearing Free Academy!



The three men looked hopelessly at each other. An air of fatigued

righteousness and a desire to be spiritually at rest from other trials

pervaded Mr. Peaseley. Whether or not the young man felt the evident

objection he had raised, he assumed a careless position, with his back

and elbows against the bar; but even the attitude was clearly not his

own.



"Are you personally known to Mr. Barstow?" asked Sperry, with a slight

business asperity.



"Yes."



"That is--you are quite well acquainted with him?"



"If you'd heard me gag his style a minute ago, so that everybody here

knew who it was, you'd say so."



Mr. Peaseley's eyes sought the ceiling, and rested on the hanging lamp,

as if nothing short of direct providential interference could meet the

occasion. Yet, as the eyes of his brother trustees were bent on him

expectantly, he nerved himself to say something.



"I suppose, Mr.--Mr. Twing, you have properly understood the great--I

may say, very grave, intellectual, and moral responsibilities of the

work you seek to undertake--and the necessity of supporting it by

EXAMPLE, by practice, by personal influence both in the school and OUT

OF IT. Sir, I presume, sir, you feel that you are fully competent to

undertake this?"



"I reckon HE does!"



"WHO does?"



"Sam Barstow, or he wouldn't have selected me. I presume" (with the

slightest possible and almost instinctive imitation of the reverend

gentleman's manner) "his head is considered level."



Mr. Peaseley withdrew his eyes from the ceiling. "I have," he said to

his companions, with a pained smile, "an important choir meeting to

attend this afternoon. I fear I must be excused." As he moved towards

the door, the others formally following him, until out of the stranger's

hearing, he added: "I wash my hands of this. After so wanton and

unseemly an exhibition of utter incompetency, and even of understanding

of the trust imposed upon him--upon US--MY conscience forbids me to

interfere further. But the real arbiter in this matter will be--thank

Heaven!--the mistress herself. You have only to confront her at once

with this man. HER decision will be speedy and final. For even Mr.

Barstow will not dare to force so outrageous a character upon a

delicate, refined woman, in a familiar and confidential capacity."



"That's so," said Sperry eagerly; "she'll settle it. And, of course,"

added the mill-owner, "that will leave us out of any difficulty with

Sam."



The two men returned to the hapless stranger, relieved, yet constrained

by the sacrifice to which they felt they were leading him. It would be

necessary, they said, to introduce him to his principal, Mrs. Martin,

at once. They might still find her at the schoolhouse, distant but a few

steps. They said little else, the stranger keeping up an ostentatious

whistling, and becoming more and more incongruous, they thought, as they

neared the pretty schoolhouse. Here they DID find Mrs. Martin, who had,

naturally, lingered after the interview with Sperry.



She came forward to meet them, with the nervous shyness and slightly

fastidious hesitation that was her nature. They saw, or fancied

they saw, the same surprise and disappointment they had themselves

experienced pass over her sensitive face, as she looked at him; they

felt that their vulgar charge appeared still more outrageous by contrast

with this delicate woman and her pretty, refined surroundings; but they

saw that HE enjoyed it, and was even--if such a word could be applied to

so self-conscious a man--more at ease in her presence!



"I reckon you and me will pull together very well, ma'am," he said

confidently.



They looked to see her turn her back upon him; faint, or burst out

crying; but she did neither, and only gazed at him quietly.



"It's a mighty pretty place you've got here--and I like it, and if WE

can't run it, I don't know who can. Only just let me know WHAT you want,

ma'am, and you can count on me every time."



To their profound consternation Mrs. Martin smiled faintly.



"It rests with YOU only, Mrs. Martin," said Sperry quickly and

significantly. "It's YOUR say, you know; you're the only one to be

considered or consulted here."



"Only just say what you want me to do," continued Twing, apparently

ignoring the trustees; "pick out the style of job; give me a hint or

two how to work it, or what you'd think would be the proper gag to fetch

'em, and I'm there, ma'am. It may be new at first, but I'll get at the

business of it quick enough."



Mrs. Martin smiled--this time quite perceptibly--with the least

little color in her cheeks and eyes. "Then you've had no experience in

teaching?" she said.



"Well no."



"You are not a graduate of any college?"



"Not much."



The two trustees looked at each other. Even Mr. Peaseley had not

conceived such a damning revelation.



"Well," said Mrs. Martin slowly, "perhaps Mr. Twing had better COME

EARLY TOMORROW MORNING AND BEGIN."



"Begin?" gasped Mr. Sperry in breathless astonishment.



"Certainly," said Mrs. Martin in timid explanation. "If he is new to the

work the sooner the better."



Mr. Sperry could only gaze blankly at his brother official. Had they

heard aright? Was this the recklessness of nervous excitement in a woman

of delicate health, or had the impostor cast some glamour upon her? Or

was she frightened of Sam Barstow and afraid to reject his candidate?

The last thought was an inspiration. He drew her quickly aside. "One

moment, Mrs. Martin! You said to me an hour ago that you didn't intend

to have asked Mr. Barstow to send you an assistant. I hope that, merely

because he HAS done so, you don't feel obliged to accept this man

against your better judgment?"



"Oh no," said Mrs. Martin quietly.



The case seemed hopeless. And Sperry had the miserable conviction that

by having insisted upon Mrs. Martin's judgment being final they had

estopped their own right to object. But how could they have foreseen her

extraordinary taste? He, however, roused himself for a last appeal.



"Mrs. Martin," he said in a lower voice, "I ought to tell you that the

Reverend Mr. Peaseley strongly doubts the competency of that young man."



"Didn't Mr. Barstow make a selection at your request?" asked Mrs.

Martin, with a faint little nervous cough.



"Yes--but"--



"Then his competency only concerns ME--and I don't see what Mr. Peaseley

has to say about it."



Could he believe his senses? There was a decided flush in the woman's

pale face, and the first note of independence and asperity in her voice.



That night, in the privacy of his conjugal chamber, Mr. Sperry relieved

his mind to another of the enigmatical sex,--the stout Southwestern

partner of his joys and troubles. But the result was equally

unsatisfactory. "Well, Abner," said the lady, "I never could see, for

all your men's praises of Mrs. Martin, what that feller can see in HER

to like!"





CHAPTER III.





Mrs. Martin was early at the schoolhouse the next morning, yet not so

early but that she discovered that the new assistant had been there

before her. This was shown in some rearrangement of the school seats and

benches. They were placed so as to form a horseshoe before her desk, and

at the further extremity of this semicircle was a chair evidently for

himself. She was a little nettled at his premature action, although

admitting the utility of the change, but she was still more annoyed

at his absence at such a moment. It was nearly the school hour when

he appeared, to her surprise, marshaling a file of some of the smaller

children whom he had evidently picked up en route, and who were, to her

greater surprise, apparently on the best of terms with him. "Thought

I'd better rake 'em in, introduce myself to 'em, and get 'em to know me

before school begins. Excuse me," he went on hastily, "but I've a lot

more coming up, and I'd better make myself square with them OUTSIDE."

But Mrs. Martin had apparently developed a certain degree of stiffness

since their evening's interview.



"It seems to me quite as important, Mr. Twing," she said drily, "that

you should first learn some of your own duties, which I came here early

to teach you."



"Not at all," he said cheerfully. "Today I take my seat, as I've

arranged it, you see, over there with them, and watch 'em go through the

motions. One rehearsal's enough for ME. At the same time, I can chip in

if necessary." And before she could reply he was out of the schoolhouse

again, hailing the new-comers. This was done with apparently such

delight to the children and with some evidently imported expression into

his smooth mask-like face, that Mrs. Martin had to content herself with

watching him with equal curiosity. She was turning away with a sudden

sense of forgotten dignity, when a shout of joyous, childish laughter

attracted her attention to the window. The new assistant, with half a

dozen small children on his square shoulders, walking with bent back and

every simulation of advanced senility, was evidently personating,

with the assistance of astonishingly distorted features, the ogre of a

Christmas pantomime. As his eye caught hers the expression vanished, the

mask-like face returned; he set the children down, and moved away. And

when school began, although he marshaled them triumphantly to the very

door,--with what contortion of face or simulation of character she was

unable to guess,--after he had entered the schoolroom and taken his seat

every vestige of his previous facial aberration was gone, and only his

usual stolidity remained. In vain, as Mrs. Martin expected, the hundred

delighted little eyes before her dwelt at first eagerly and hopefully

upon his face, but, as she HAD NOT expected, recognizing from the

blankness of his demeanor that the previous performance was intended for

them exclusively, the same eager eyes were presently dropped again upon

their books in simple imitation, as if he were one of themselves. Mrs.

Martin breathed freely, and lessons began.



Yet she was nervously conscious, meanwhile, of a more ill-omened

occurrence. This was the non-arrival of several of her oldest pupils,

notably, the refractory and incorrigible Pike County contingent to whom

Sperry had alluded. For the past few days they had hovered on the verge

of active insubordination, and had indulged in vague mutterings which

she had resolutely determined not to hear. It was, therefore, with some

inward trepidations, not entirely relieved by Twing's presence, that she

saw the three Mackinnons and the two Hardees slouch into the school

a full hour after the lessons had begun. They did not even excuse

themselves, but were proceeding with a surly and ostentatious defiance

to their seats, when Mrs. Martin was obliged to look up, and--as the

eldest Hardee filed before her--to demand an explanation. The culprit

addressed--a dull, heavy-looking youth of nineteen--hesitated with an

air of mingled doggedness and sheepishness, and then, without replying,

nudged his companion. It was evidently a preconcerted signal of

rebellion, for the boy nudged stopped, and, turning a more intelligent,

but equally dissatisfied, face upon the schoolmistress, began

determinedly:--



"Wot's our excuse for coming an hour late? Well, we ain't got none. WE

don't call it an hour late--WE don't. We call it the right time. We call

it the right time for OUR lessons, for we don't allow to come here to

sing hymns with babbies. We don't want to know 'where, oh where, are the

Hebrew children?' They ain't nothin' to us Americans. And we don't want

any more Daniels in the Lions' Den played off on us. We have enough of

'em in Sunday-school. We ain't hankerin' much for grammar and dictionary

hogwash, and we don't want no Boston parts o' speech rung in on us the

first thing in the mo'nin'. We ain't Boston--we're Pike County--WE are.

We reckon to do our sums, and our figgerin', and our sale and barter,

and our interest tables and weights and measures when the time comes,

and our geograffy when it's on, and our readin' and writin' and the

American Constitution in reg'lar hours, and then we calkilate to git

up and git afore the po'try and the Boston airs and graces come round.

That's our rights and what our fathers pay school taxes for, and we want

'em."



He stopped, looking less towards the schoolmistress than to his

companions, for whom perhaps, after the schoolboy fashion, this attitude

was taken. Mrs. Martin sat, quite white and self-contained, with her

eyes fixed on the frayed rim of the rebel's straw hat which he still

kept on his head. Then she said quietly:--



"Take off your hat, sir."



The boy did not move.



"He can't," said a voice cheerfully.



It was the new assistant. The whole school faced rapidly towards him.

The rebel leader and his followers, who had not noticed him before,

stared at the interrupter, who did not, however, seem to exhibit any of

the authority of office, but rather the comment and criticism of one of

themselves. "Wot you mean?" asked the boy indignantly.



"I mean you can't take off your hat because you've got some things

stowed away in it you don't want seen," said Twing, with an immovable

face.



"Wot things?" exclaimed the boy angrily. Then suddenly recollecting

himself, he added, "Go along! You can't fool me! Think you'll make me

take off my hat--don't you?"



"Well," said Twing, advancing to the side of the rebel, "look here

then!" With a dexterous movement and a slight struggle from the boy, he

lifted the hat. A half-dozen apples, a bird's nest, two birds' eggs,

and a fluttering half-fledged bird fell from it. A wave of delight

and astonishment ran along the benches, a blank look of hopeless

bewilderment settled upon the boy's face, and the gravity of the

situation disappeared forever in the irrepressible burst of laughter,

in which even his brother rebels joined. The smallest child who had been

half-frightened, half-fascinated by the bold, bad, heroic attitude of

the mutineer, was quick to see the ridiculousness of that figure crowned

with cheap schoolboy plunder. The eloquent protest of his wrongs was

lost in the ludicrous appearance of the protester. Even Mrs. Martin felt

that nothing she could say at that moment could lift the rebellion into

seriousness again. But Twing was evidently not satisfied.



"Beg Mrs. Martin's pardon, and say you were foolin' with the boys," he

said in a low voice.



The discomfited rebel hesitated.



"Say it, or I'll SHOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT IN YOUR POCKETS!" said Twing in a

terribly significant aside.



The boy mumbled an apology to Mrs. Martin, scrambled in a blank,

hopeless way to his seat, and the brief rebellion ignominiously ended.

But two things struck Mrs. Martin as peculiar. She overheard the culprit

say, with bated breath and evident sincerity, to his comrades: "Hadn't

nothing in my hat, anyway!" and one of the infant class was heard to

complain, in a deeply-injured way, that the bird's nest was HIS, and had

been "stoled" from his desk. And there still remained the fact for which

Twing's undoubted fascination over the children had somewhat prepared

her--that at recess the malcontents--one and all--seemed to have

forgiven the man who had overcome them, and gathered round him with

unmistakable interest. All this, however, did not blind her to the

serious intent of the rebellion, or of Twing's unaccountable assumption

of her prerogative. While he was still romping with the children she

called him in.



"I must remind you," she said, with a slight nervous asperity, "that

this outrageous conduct of Tom Hardee was evidently deliberated and

prepared by the others, and cannot end in this way."



He looked at her with a face so exasperatingly expressionless that

she could have slapped it as if it had belonged to one of the older

scholars, and said,--"But it HAS ended. It's a dead frost."



"I don't know what you mean; and I must remind you also that in this

school we neither teach nor learn slang."



His immobile face changed for an instant to a look of such decided

admiration that she felt her color rise; but he wiped his expression

away with his hand as if it had been some artificial make-up, and said

awkwardly, but earnestly:--



"Excuse me--won't you? But, look here, Mrs. Martin, I found out early

this morning, when I was squaring myself with the other children, that

there was this row hangin' on--in fact, that there was a sort of idea

that Pike County wasn't having a fair show--excuse me--in the running of

the school, and that Peaseley and Barstow were a little too much on in

every scene. In fact, you see, it was just what Tom said."



"This is insufferable," said Mrs. Martin, her eyes growing darker as

her cheeks grew red. "They shall go home to their parents, and tell them

from me"--



"That they're all mistaken--excuse me--but that's just what THEY'RE

GOIN' TO DO. I tell you, Mrs. Martin, their little game's busted--I beg

pardon--but it's all over. You'll have no more trouble with them."



"And you think that just because you found Tom had something in his hat,

and exposed him?" said Mrs. Martin scornfully.



"Tom HADN'T anything in his hat," said Twing, wiping his mouth slowly.



"Nothing?" repeated Mrs. Martin.



"No."



"But I SAW you take the things out."



"That was only a TRICK! He had nothing except what I had up my sleeve,

and forced on him. He knew it, and that frightened him, and made him

look like a fool, and so bursted up his conspiracy. There's nothin'

boys are more afraid of than ridicule, or the man or boy that make 'em

ridiculous."



"I won't ask you if you call this FAIR to the boy, Mr. Twing?" said Mrs.

Martin hotly; "but is this your idea of discipline?"



"I call it fair, because Tom knew it was some kind of a trick, and

wasn't deceived. I call it discipline if it made him do what was right

afterwards, and makes him afraid or unwilling to do anything to offend

me or you again. He likes me none the worse for giving him a chance of

being laughed out of a thing instead of being DRIVEN out of it. And," he

added, with awkward earnestness, "if you'll just leave all this to

ME, and only consider me here to take this sort of work which ain't

a lady's--off your hands, we'll just strike our own line between the

Peaseleys and Pike County--and run this school in spite of both."



A little mollified, a good deal puzzled, and perhaps more influenced by

the man's manner than she had imagined, Mrs. Martin said nothing, but

let the day pass without dismissing the offenders. And on returning home

that evening she was considerably surprised to receive her landlady's

extravagant congratulations on the advent of her new assistant. "And

they do say, Mrs. Martin," continued that lady enthusiastically, "that

your just setting your foot down square on that Peaseley and that

Barstow, BOTH OF 'EM--and choosing your own assistant yourself--a plain

young fellow with no frills and fancies, but one that you could set

about making all the changes you like, was just the biggest thing you

ever did for Pine Clearing."



"And--they--consider him quite--competent?" said Mrs. Martin, with timid

color and hesitating audacity.



"Competent! You ask my Johnny."



Nevertheless, Mrs. Martin was somewhat formally early at the schoolhouse

the next morning. "Perhaps," she said, with an odd mixture of dignity

and timidity, "we'd better, before school commences, go over the lessons

for the day."



"I HAVE," he said quickly. "I told you ONE rehearsal was enough for me."



"You mean you have looked over them?"



"Got 'em by heart. Letter perfect. Want to hear me? Listen."



She did. He had actually committed to memory, and without a lapse, the

entire text of rules, questions, answers, and examples of the lessons

for the day.





CHAPTER IV.





Before a month had passed, Mr. Twing's success was secure and

established. So were a few of the changes he had quietly instituted.

The devotional singing and Scripture reading which had excited the

discontent of the Pike County children and their parents was not

discontinued, but half an hour before recess was given up to some

secular choruses, patriotic or topical, in which the little ones under

Twing's really wonderful practical tuition exhibited such quick and

pleasing proficiency, that a certain negro minstrel camp-meeting

song attained sufficient popularity to be lifted by general accord to

promotion to the devotional exercises, where it eventually ousted the

objectionable "Hebrew children" on the question of melody alone. Grammar

was still taught at Pine Clearing School in spite of the Hardees and

Mackinnons, but Twing had managed to import into the cognate exercises

of recitation a wonderful degree of enthusiasm and excellence.

Dialectical Pike County, that had refused to recognize the governing

powers of the nominative case, nevertheless came out strong in classical

elocution, and Tom Hardee, who had delivered his ungrammatical protest

on behalf of Pike County, was no less strong, if more elegant, in his

impeachment of Warren Hastings as Edmund Burke, with the equal sanction

of his parents. The trustees, Sperry and Jackson, had marveled, but

were glad enough to accept the popular verdict--only Mr. Peaseley still

retained an attitude of martyr-like forbearance and fatigued toleration

towards the new assistant and his changes. As to Mrs. Martin, she seemed

to accept the work of Mr. Twing after his own definition of it--as of a

masculine quality ill-suited to a lady's tastes and inclinations; but it

was noticeable that while she had at first repelled any criticism of him

whatever, she had lately been given to explaining his position to her

friends, and had spoken of him with somewhat labored and ostentatious

patronage. Yet when they were alone together she frankly found him very

amusing, and his presumption and vulgarity so clearly unintentional that

it no longer offended her. They were good friends without having any

confidences beyond the duties of the school; she had asked no further

explanation of the fact that he had been selected by Mr. Barstow

without reference to any special antecedent training. What his actual

antecedents were she had never cared to know, nor he apparently to

reveal; that he had been engaged in some other occupations of superior

or inferior quality would not have been remarkable in a community where

the principal lawyer had been a soldier, and the miller a doctor. The

fact that he admired her was plain enough to HER; that it pleased her,

but carried with it no ulterior thought or responsibility, might have

been equally clear to others. Perhaps it was so to HIM.



Howbeit, this easy mutual intercourse was one day interrupted by what

seemed a trifling incident. The piano, which Mr. Barstow had promised,

duly made its appearance in the schoolhouse, to the delight of the

scholars and the gentle satisfaction of Mrs. Martin, who, in addition to

the rudimentary musical instruction of the younger girls, occasionally

played upon it herself in a prim, refined, and conscientious fashion.

To this, when she was alone after school hours, she sometimes added a

faint, colorless voice of limited range and gentlewomanly expression. It

was on one of these occasions that Twing, becoming an accidental auditor

of this chaste, sad piping, was not only permitted to remain to hear the

end of a love song of strictly guarded passion in the subjunctive

mood, but at the close was invited to try his hand--a quick, if not a

cultivated one--at the instrument. He did so. Like her, he added his

voice. Like hers, it was a love song. But there the similitude ended.

Negro in dialect, illiterate in construction, idiotic in passion, and

presumably addressed to the "Rose of Alabama," in the very extravagance

of its childish infatuation it might have been a mockery of the

schoolmistress's song but for one tremendous fact! In unrestrained

feeling, pathetic yearning, and exquisite tenderness of expression, it

was unmistakably and appallingly personal and sincere. It was true the

lips spoken of were "lubly," the eyes alluded to were like "lightenin'

bugs," but from the voice and gestures of the singer Mrs. Martin

confusedly felt that they were intended for HERS, and even the refrain

that "she dressed so neat and looked so sweet" was glaringly allusive

to her own modish mourning. Alternately flushing and paling, with a

hysteric smile hovering round her small reserved mouth, the unfortunate

gentlewoman was fain to turn to the window to keep her countenance until

it was concluded. She did not ask him to repeat it, nor did she again

subject herself to this palpable serenade, but a few days afterwards, as

she was idly striking the keys in the interval of a music lesson, one

of her little pupils broke out, "Why, Mrs. Martin, if yo ain't a pickin'

out that pow'ful pretty tune that Mr. Twing sings!"



Nevertheless, when Twing, a week or two later, suggested that he might

sing the same song as a solo at a certain performance to be given by the

school children in aid of a local charity, she drily intimated that it

was hardly of a character to suit the entertainment. "But," she added,

more gently, "you recite so well; why not give a recitation?"



He looked at her with questioning and troubled eyes,--the one expression

he seemed to have lately acquired. "But that would be IN PUBLIC!

There'll be a lot of people there," he said doubtfully.



A little amused at this first apparent sign of a want of confidence in

himself, she said, with a reassuring smile, "So much the better,--you do

it really too well to have it thrown away entirely on children."



"Do YOU wish it?" he said suddenly.



Somewhat confused, but more irritated by his abruptness, she replied,

"Why not?" But when the day came, and before a crowded audience, in

which there was a fair sprinkling of strangers, she regretted her rash

suggestion. For when the pupils had gone through certain calisthenic

exercises--admirably taught and arranged by him--and "spoken their

pieces," he arose, and, fixing his eyes on her, began Othello's defense

before the Duke and Council. Here, as on the previous occasion, she felt

herself personally alluded to in his account of his wooing.

Desdemona, for some occult reason, vicariously appeared for her in the

unwarrantable picture of his passion, and to this was added the absurd

consciousness which she could not put aside that the audience, following

with enthusiasm his really strong declamation, was also following his

suggestion and adopting it. Yet she was also conscious, and, as she

thought, as inconsistently, of being pleased and even proud of his

success. At the conclusion the applause was general, and a voice added

with husky admiration and familiarity:--



"Brayvo, Johnny Walker!"



Twing's face became suddenly white as a Pierrot mask. There was a dead

silence, in which the voice continued, "Give us 'Sugar in the Gourd,'

Johnny."



A few hisses, and cries of "Hush!" "Put him out!" followed. Mrs. Martin

raised her eyes quickly to where her assistant had stood bowing his

thanks a moment before. He was gone!



More concerned than she cared to confess, vaguely fearful that she was

in some way connected with his abrupt withdrawal, and perhaps a little

remorseful that she had allowed her personal feelings to interfere with

her frank recognition of his triumph, she turned back to the schoolroom,

after the little performers and their audience had departed, in the hope

that he might return. It was getting late, the nearly level rays of the

sun were lying on the empty benches at the lower end of the room, but

the desk where she sat with its lid raised was in deep shadow.

Suddenly she heard his voice in a rear hall, but it was accompanied by

another's,--the same voice which had interrupted the applause. Before

she could either withdraw, or make herself known, the two men had

entered the room, and were passing slowly through it. She understood at

once that Twing had slipped out into a janitor's room in the rear,

where he had evidently forced an interview and explanation from his

interrupter, and now had been waiting for the audience to disperse

before emerging by the front door. They had evidently overlooked her in

the shadow.



"But," said the stranger, as if following an aggrieved line of apology,

"if Barstow knew who you were, and what you'd done, and still thought

you good enough to rastle round here and square up them Pike County

fellers and them kids--what in thunder do you care if the others DO find

you out, as long as Barstow sticks to you?"



"I've told you why, Dick," returned Twing gloomily.



"Oh, the schoolma'am!"



"Yes, she's a saint, an angel. More than that--she's a lady, Dick,

to the tip of her fingers, who knows nothing of the world outside a

parson's study. She took me on trust--without a word--when the trustees

hung back and stared. She's never asked me about myself, and now when

she knows who and what I have been--she'll loathe me!"



"But look here, Jim," said the stranger anxiously. "I'll say it's all a

lie. I'll come here and apologize to you afore HER, and say I took you

for somebody else. I'll"--



"It's too late," said Twing moodily.



"And what'll you do?"



"Leave here."



They had reached the door together. To Mrs. Martin's terror, as the

stranger passed out, Twing, instead of following him as she expected,

said "Good-night," and gloomily re-entered the schoolroom. Here he

paused a moment, and then throwing himself on one of the benches,

dropped his head upon a desk with his face buried in his hands--like a

very schoolboy.



What passed through Mrs. Martin's mind I know not. For a moment she sat

erect and rigid at her desk. Then she slipped quietly down, and, softly

as one of the last shadows cast by the dying sun, glided across the

floor to where he sat.



"Mrs. Martin," he said, starting to his feet.



"I have heard all," she said faintly. "I couldn't help it. I was here

when you came in. But I want to tell you that I am content to know you

only as you seem to be,--as I have always found you here,--strong and

loyal to a duty laid upon you by those who had a full knowledge of all

you had been."



"Did you? Do you know what I have been?"



Mrs. Martin looked frightened, trembled a moment, and, recovering

herself with an effort, said gently, "I know nothing of your past."



"Nothing?" he repeated, with a mirthless attempt at laughter, and a

quick breath. "Not that I've been a--a--mountebank, a variety actor--a

clown, you know, for the amusement of the lowest, at twenty-five cents a

ticket. That I'm 'Johnny Walker,' the song and dance man--the all-round

man--selected by Mr. Barstow to teach these boors a lesson as to what

they wanted!"



She looked at him a moment--timidly, yet thoughtfully. "Then you are an

actor--a person who simulates what he does not feel?"



"Yes."



"And all the time you have been here you have been acting the

schoolmaster--playing a part--for--for Mr. Barstow?"



"Yes."



"Always?"



"Yes."



The color came softly to her face again, and her voice was very low.

"And when you sang to me that day, and when you looked at me--as

you did--an hour or two ago--while you were entertaining--you

were--only--acting?"



Mr. Twing's answer was not known, but it must have been a full and

complete one, for it was quite dark when he left the schoolroom--NOT for

the last time--with its mistress on his arm.