Katy Gaumer

But here, into this blessed peace and security, into this great planning, fell, like a dangerous explosive, the threatening letter. Almost beside himself with fright, worn with three nights' sleepless vigil, confused with the numerous plans for ridding himself of his persecutor which he made only to reject, and aware that an immediate answer must be sent, John Hartman approached the church where William Koehler had been working.

The open door seemed to invite him to take refuge within. He kept constantly touching the letter in his pocket. He meant to destroy it, but it bore an address which he dared not lose. He had been sitting by the roadside on a fallen log, holding the letter in his hand and writing absent-mindedly upon it.

In the church he saw William's half-finished work and the curious key in the little cupboard. As an elder, he had a right to open the door and to take out the beautiful silver vessels, the extravagance of one generation which had become the pride of the next. It seemed for an instant as though a touch of the holy things might give him peace. Untying the cord of the heavy bag as he laid it on top of William's half-finished wall, he lifted out the silver chalice.

But the sight of the beautiful vessel gave him no relief, and the cool, smooth surface made him shiver. He grasped it suddenly and involuntarily cried out, "Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!"

The grip of his hand was so strong that the cup slipped from his fingers and striking the top of William's wall, bounded into the dark aperture which the building of the wall had made. He reached frantically after it, and the gray bag, containing the pitcher and paten, struck by his elbow, followed the silver cup.

For an instant the accident drove the more serious trouble from John Hartman's mind. He had great reverence for the sacred vessels and he was afraid that the fall had bruised their beautiful surfaces. He tried to reach the bag, which lay uppermost, but it was just beyond the tips of his fingers at the longest reach of his arm. He would have to get William Koehler to help him, much as he disliked to confess to such carelessness. William would be shocked and horrified.

Then, suddenly, John Hartman gave a sharp cry. In his struggle to reach the gray bag, the letter had dropped from his pocket. He had not put it back into its envelope after his last anguished reading; he could see it now as it lay spread out below him in the darkness. His frantic eyes seemed to read each word on the dim page. "Your wife will know about it, and your little boy and all the country." If he called William to help him, William might read the letter. Even if William made no actual effort to decipher it, a single glance might reveal that some one was threatening John Hartman.

He thought that he heard William coming through the new Sunday School room and in panic, and without stopping to reason beyond the swift conclusion that if William's attention were not called to them, he would not see the bag and the letter far down in the narrow pit, he turned and locked the cupboard door and went out the door of the church and down the road. He did not reflect that William might easily discover that the communion set was gone, that he might accidentally drop his trowel into the deep hole and in reaching it find the dreadful letter, and that he might give an alarm, and all be lost; his only thought was to get away.

He remembered dimly that he had brushed aside a little child in his rush to the church door. When he reached the door, he held himself back from running by a mighty effort and walked slowly down the pike, little Katy Gaumer toddling fearfully behind him. It was easy to pretend that he did not hear William call. Already he had planned how he would restore the silver to its place. He knew that William was engaged that afternoon to work at Zion Church; therefore the wall would not be closed that day.

At night he would go to the church with a hoe or rake and lift out the sacred vessels and the dreadful letter, whose very proximity to them was sacrilege. If the pitcher and the chalice and the plate had suffered harm, he would explain that he had taken them to the jeweler to be polished, and he would then have them repaired.

But William postponed his work at Zion Church, and that night, when John Hartman stole back to replace the silver, the wall was finished and the mortar set.

That night, also, John Hartman learned with absolute certainty that his persecutor was dead, and his persecution at an end.

"They do not know that the communion set is gone," thought he. "To-morrow I will find a way."

But in a sort of stupor, from which he roused himself now and then to make wild and fruitless plans, John Hartman let the days go by. The blow he had received had affected him not only mentally, but physically, and he was slow to recover from it, past though the danger was. He went about his farms, he looked earnestly upon his wife, he clasped his little boy in his arms to assure himself that his two treasures were real.

But the more certain he became that the ghost of the past was laid, the more terribly did the present specter rise to harass him. Communion Sunday was approaching, the loss of the communion service would be discovered. There were moments when the distracted man prayed for a miracle. He had been delivered from that other terror by an act of Providence which was almost a miracle; would he not be similarly saved in a situation in which he was innocent?

He thought of going at night and tearing the wall down and restoring the service to its place, leaving the strange vandalism a mystery to horrified Millerstown. How happy he should be to pay for the rebuilding of the wall! But the task was too difficult, discovery too probable.

As the days passed, another way out of his trouble occurred to him. He would go to William Koehler and tell him all his misery. William was a good-natured, quiet soul, who could be persuaded to silence, or who might set a price upon silence, if silence were a salable commodity. William could easily find an excuse for doing his work over; it was well known that he was foolishly particular. It never occurred to John that suspicion of theft would probably fall upon honest, simple William, who had had the key of the cupboard and who had been the whole day alone in the church. He got no farther than his own terrible problem. He had dropped the silver into the wall; both letter and silver were there convicting him; he must find a way to get them both out and to put the silver in its place.

But he allowed day after day to pass and did not visit William. William was, after all, only a day laborer of the stupid family of Koehlers and John was a property owner and an elder in the church; it would be intolerably humiliating to make such a confession. Communion Sunday was still two weeks away; there would be time for him to make some other plan.

When Communion Sunday morning came, John had still no plan. Moving as in a trance, he went with his wife to church, to find the congregation gathered into wondering, distressed groups. The door of the little cupboard was open, and beside it was the smooth, newly painted wall. It was too late for John to ask William Koehler for help in his difficulty.

He did not realize that all about him his fellow church members were whispering about William; he did not hear that William was accused, he was so dazed by the fortunate complications of his own situation. They did not dream of his agency! He would replace the set with a much more beautiful one. This generation would pass away long before the wall would be taken down and then the letter would be utterly destroyed by age or dampness. He said to himself that God had been very good to him; he even dared to thank Him during the confused, uneasy service which the pastor conducted upon his return from the house of William Koehler.

And if William were accused, William had only to deny that he had seen the communion service or that he had even opened the door! He might, if worse came to worst, let them search his house. John wished patronizingly that he could give William a little advice. He pitied William.

By night this pity had changed to hate. For like the wildcats, whose leap from above he had feared as a child when he walked the mountain road, so William leaped upon him with his charge.

"You took it!" insisted William. "You stole the communion set!"

Here was ruin, indeed! But Cassie thought the man mad; she paid no attention to his frantic words; she was concerned only about the state of her snow-tracked floor. Hope leaped in the breast of John Hartman. No living soul would believe such an accusation against him!

When William had gone, John put on his coat and went to the house of the preacher. He even forced himself to use one of Millerstown's interesting idioms, one of the last humorous expressions of John Hartman's life.

"William Koehler came to me and accused me of stealing the communion service," said he. "There is one rafter too few or too many in his little house."

The preacher shook his head.

"There is something very wrong with poor William," said he sorrowfully.

With a firm step John Hartman returned to his house. When it was time for the evening service he went to church as was his custom.

John Hartman's bank account increased steadily; he added field to field and orchard to orchard. His great safe in the dining-room held papers of greater and greater value; his great Swiss barns with their deep forebays and their mammoth haylofts were enlarged; his orchards bent under their weight of fruit. But John Hartman did not say to his soul, "Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." With his soul poor John held a different sort of converse.

Desperately he tried to fix his mind upon his many affairs, so that he might shut out the recollection of William Koehler and the sound of his mad voice. He was afraid for a long time that he, John Hartman, might rise suddenly in church and make rash confession, or that he might point out to his fellow directors in the bank the black-bearded, sharp-eyed face, which he saw looking at him over their shoulders, or that he might shout out upon the street his secret.

Gradually he succeeded in thinking only of his work. The sudden appearance of William Koehler gave him a strange trembling of the limbs and an oppression about the heart, that was all. William made no further accusation for a long time, and encounters could be avoided. Long before William had begun to pray aloud, dropping down in front of the post-office or at a street corner, Millerstown had become certain that he was crazy. His unintelligible prayers betrayed nothing.

But, slowly, as his mind turned itself a little from its own wretchedness, poor Hartman became aware of an enemy in his own household. To his caresses his wife ceased to respond; she had become once more the silent, cold woman of their earliest married life, whom he had chosen because she and the woman who had victimized him were as far apart as the poles in character and disposition. At first poor Hartman thought that she felt his neglect of her during the weeks of his misery; he tried now to be all the more tender and affectionate. If he could only find here a refuge, if he could only lay before her his wretched state! But confession to Cassie was impossible; one had only to look upon her to see that!

Presently Hartman decided that she believed William's accusation, and he became enraged with her because she would believe that to which no one else in Millerstown would give an instant's credence. "Let her believe!" said he then in his despair. She became in his mind a partner of William against him. Let each do his worst; they could convict him of nothing.

In reality it was Hartman's earlier sin which was no more his secret. He had delayed too long in answering the demand for money and a letter had been written to Cassie also, and Cassie had hardened her heart against him, hardened her heart even against her child. Cassie had had a sad life; her heart was only a little softened as yet by her happiness.

"I will not care," cried poor Cassie. "I will henceforth set my heart on nothing!"

Cassie was a woman of mighty will; her youth had trained her to strength. When her child climbed her knee, she put him away from her; when she remembered John Hartman's hopes for the occupation of the many rooms he had built in his house, she shook her head with a deep, choking, indrawn breath. It could never, never be!

But the human heart must have some object for its care or it will cease to beat. Upon her possessions, her house, her carpets, her furniture, Cassie set now her affection. These inanimate things had no power to deceive, to betray, to torture. Gradually they became so precious that her great rooms were like shrines, into which she went but seldom, but to which her heart turned as she sat alone by her kitchen window with her sewing or lay awake by her husband's side in the great wonderfully bedecked walnut bed which, to her thinking, human use profaned.

Thus, in the same house, eating at the same table, sitting side by side in church, watching their son grow into a young manhood which was as silent as their middle age, the guilty man and the unforgiving woman had lived side by side for almost fifteen years this Christmas Day. John Hartman had built no great church, rising like a cathedral on the hillside. He had not even presented the church with a communion service, being afraid of rousing suspicion. He had gathered great store for himself—an object in life toward which he had never aimed.

Millerstown suspected nothing, neither of the sin of John Hartman's youth, nor of his strange connection with the disappearance of the communion service, nor of poor Cassie's aching, hardening heart. Millerstown, like the rest of the world, accepted people as they were; it did not seek for excuses or explanations or springs of action. John Hartman was a silent and taciturn man—few persons remembered that he had been otherwise. Cassie was so unpleasantly particular about her belongings that she would not invite her neighbors to quiltings and apple-butter boilings, and so inhumanly unsocial that she would not attend those functions at other houses. There was an end of the Hartmans.

Gradually a second change came over John Hartman. His horror of discovery became a horror of his sin; he was bowed with grief and remorse.

"He has gone crazy over it!" he lamented. "William Koehler has gone crazy over it. I wish"—poor Hartman spoke with agony—"I wish he had proved it against me. Then it would all have been over long ago!"

When William Koehler's wife died, John Hartman struggled terribly with himself, but could not bring himself to make confession. From an upper window he watched the little cortège leave the house on the hill; he saw William lift his little boy into the carriage; he saw the cortège disappear in the whirling snow. But still he was silent.

When William in his insanity mortgaged his little house in order to pay dishonest and thieving men to watch John Hartman, John Hartman secured the mortgage and treasured it against the time when he would prove to William that he had tried to do well by him. John Hartman also bought other mortgages. When Oliver Kuhns, the elder, squandered his little inheritance in the only spree of his life, John Hartman helped him to keep the whole matter from Millerstown and restored to him his house. When one of the Fackenthals, yielding to a mad impulse to speculate, used the money of the school board and lost it, John Hartman gave him the money in secret. Proud Emma Loos never knew that her husband had wasted her little patrimony before he died. Sarah Benner never discovered that for days threat of prison hung over her son and that John Hartman helped him to make good what he had stolen.

But John Hartman's benefactions did not ease his soul. He came to see clearly that he must have peace of mind or he would die. He no longer thought of the disgrace to his wife and son; his thoughts had been for so long fixed upon himself that he could put himself in the place of no one else.

"To-morrow I will make this right," he would say, and forever, "To-morrow, to-morrow!"

But the years passed and William Koehler grew more mad and John Hartman more rich and more silent, and the silver service lay deep in the pit between the church and the Sunday School. The little building was solid, it was amply large, it would serve many generations. Katy Gaumer, brushed out of his path by John Hartman as he sought the door that November day, recalled nothing of the incident except that her childish dignity had been wounded. It was Katy herself who said that nothing ever happened in Millerstown!

Presently the beating of John Hartman's pulse quickened; it became difficult for him to draw a long, free, comfortable breath. Dr. Benner, whom he consulted, said that he must eat less and must walk more. John Hartman said to himself that now, before another day passed, he would go to the little house on the mountain-side and begin to set right the awful wrong of his youth. But still he planned to go to-morrow instead of to-day. Finally, one afternoon in May, he had his horse put into the buggy and drove slowly up the mountain road.

CHAPTER VI
THE MILLERSTOWN SCHOOL

School opened on New Year's morning, and Mr. Carpenter rose a little late from his comfortable bed at Sarah Ann Mohr's and ate hurriedly his breakfast of delicious panhaas and smoked sausage. Haste at meals always tried the sybarite soul of Mr. Carpenter. He was cross because he had to get up; he was cross because he had to teach school; he was cross at Sarah Ann because she urged him to further speed. Sarah Ann always mothered and grandmothered the teacher.

"You will come late, teacher. You will have to hurry yourself. It is not a good thing to be late on New Year's already, teacher. New Year,"—went on Sarah Ann in her provokingly placid way,—"New Year should be always a fresh start in our lives."

Mr. Carpenter slammed the kitchen door; he would have liked to be one of his own scholars for the moment and to have turned and made a face at Sarah Ann. He was not interested in fresh starts. Taking his own deliberate, comfortable time, he started out the pike.

Then, suddenly, the clear, sweet notes of the schoolhouse bell, whose rope it was his high office to pull, astonished the ears of the teacher. It was one of the impertinent boys,—Ollie Kuhns, in all probability,—who thus dared to reprove his master.

"It will give a good thrashing for that one, whoever he is," Mr. Carpenter promised himself. "He will begin the New Year fine. He will ache on the New Year."

But the bell rang slowly, its stroke was not such as the arm of a strong boy could produce. Indeed, Mr. Carpenter never allowed the boys to ring the bell, because there responded at once to the sound the whole of alarmed Millerstown seeking to rescue its children from fire. The bell had, moreover, to Mr. Carpenter's puzzled ears, a solemn tone, as though it portended things of moment. Faster Mr. Carpenter moved along, past the Squire's where Whiskey barked at him, and he hissed a little at Whiskey; past Grandfather Gaumer's, where he thought of Grandfather's Katy and her ways with bitter disapproval, to the open spaces of the pike.

The bell still rang solemnly, as Mr. Carpenter hurried across the yard and up the steps.

In the vestibule of the schoolhouse, he stood still, dumb, paralyzed. The ringer of the bell, the inventor of woe still unsuspected by Mr. Carpenter, stood before him. During the Christmas holiday, Katy's best dress had become her everyday dress; its red was redder than Katy's cheeks, brighter than her eyes; it had upon her teacher the well-known effect of that brilliant color upon certain temperaments. Mr. Carpenter's cheeks began to match it in hue; he opened his lips several times to speak, but was unable to bring forth a sound.

Katy gave the rope another long, deliberate pull, then she eased her arms by letting them drop heavily to her sides. From within the schoolroom the children, even Ollie Kuhns, watched in admiration and awe. Katy was always independent, always impertinent, but she had never before dared to usurp the teacher's place.

"Say!" Thus in a terrible voice did Mr. Carpenter finally succeed in addressing his pupil. "Who told you you had the dare to ring this bell?"

To this question Katy returned no answer. With eased arms she brushed vigorously until she had removed the lint which had gathered on her dress, then she walked into the schoolroom, denuded now of its greens and flags and reduced to the dullness of every day. Her teacher continued his admonitions as he followed her up the aisle.

"I guess you think you are very smart, Katy. Well, you are not smart, that is what you are not. I would give you a good whipping if I did right, that is what I would do. I—"

To the amazement of her school-fellows, Katy, after lingering a moment at her desk, followed Mr. Carpenter to the front of the room. She still made no answer, she only approached him solemnly. Was she going, of her own accord, to deliver herself up to punishment? Mr. Carpenter's heavy rod had never dared to touch the shoulders of Katy Gaumer, whose whole "Freundschaft" was on the school board.

The Millerstown school ceased speculating and gave itself to observation. Upon the teacher's desk, Katy laid, one by one, three books and a pamphlet. Then Katy spoke, and the sound of the school bell, solemn as it had been, was not half so ominous, so filled with alarming import as Katy's words. She stood beside the desk, she offered first one book to the master, then another.

"Here is a algebray," explained Katy; "here is a geometry, here is a Latin book. Here is a catalogue that tells about these things. I am going to college; I must know many things that I never yet heard of in this world. And you"—announced Katy—"you are to learn me!"

"What!" cried Mr. Carpenter.

"I am sorry for all the bad things I did already in this school." The Millerstown children quivered with excitement; on the last seat Ollie Kuhns pretended to fall headlong into the aisle. Alvin Koehler looked up with mild interest from his desk which he had been idly contemplating, and David Hartman blushed scarlet. Poor David's pipe had not yet cured him of love. "I will do better from now on," promised Katy. "And you"—again this ominous refrain—"you are to learn me!"

"You cannot study those things!" cried Mr. Carpenter in triumph. "You are not even in the first class!"

"I will move to the first class," announced Katy. "This week I have studied all the first class spelling. You cannot catch me on a single word. I can spell them in syllables and not in syllables. I can say l, l, or double l. I can say them backwards. I have worked also all the examples in the first class arithmetic. The squire"—thus did Katy dangle the chains of Mr. Carpenter's servitude before his disgusted eyes—"the squire, he heard me the spelling, and the doctor, he looked at my examples. They were all right. It will not be long before I catch up with those two in the first class." Katy flushed a deeper red. Over and over she said to herself, "I shall be in the first class with Alvin, I shall be in the first class with Alvin!" Her knees began suddenly to tremble and she started back to her desk, scarcely knowing which way she went.

As she passed down the aisle, she felt upon her David Hartman's glance. He sat in the last row, his head down between his shoulders. As Katy drew near, his gaze dropped to the hem of her red dress. David's heart thumped; it seemed to him that every one in the school must see that he was in love with Katy Gaumer. He hated himself for it.

"Don't you want me in your class, David?" asked Katy foolishly and flippantly. Katy spoke a dozen times before she thought once.

David looked up at her, then he looked down. His eyes smarted; he was terrified lest he cry.

"I have one dumb one in my class already," said he. "I guess I can stand another."

Katy dropped into her seat with a slam. The teacher's hand was poised above the bell which called the school to order, and for Katy, at least, there was to be no more ignoring of times and seasons.

"Dumb?" repeated Katy. "You will see who is the dumb one!"

With the loud ringing of the teacher's bell a new order began in the Millerstown school. Its first manifestation was beneficent, rather than otherwise. It became apparent that with Katy Gaumer orderly, the school was orderly. The morning passed and then the afternoon without a pause in its busy labors. No one was whipped, no one was sent to the corner, no one was even reproved. A studious Katy seemed to set an example to the school; a respectful Katy seemed to establish an atmosphere of respect. Mr. Carpenter was wholly pleased.

But Mr. Carpenter's pleasure did not last. Mr. Carpenter became swiftly aware of a worse condition than that of the past. Mr. Carpenter had been lifted from the frying-pan and laid upon the fire.

To her teacher's dismay, Katy came early in the morning to ask questions; she stayed in the schoolroom at recess to ask questions; sometimes, indeed, she visited her afflicted teacher in the evenings to ask questions. Katy enjoyed visiting him in the evenings, because then Sarah Ann Mohr, sitting on the other side of the table, her delectable Millerstown "Star" forgotten, her sewing in her lap, her lips parted, burned before her favorite the incense of speechless admiration. Poor Mr. Carpenter grew thin and white, and his little mustache drooped as though all hope had gone from him. Mr. Carpenter learned to his bitter sorrow that algebra and geometry were no idle threats, and Mr. Carpenter, who had put his normal school learning, as he thought, forever behind him, had to go painfully in search of it. The squire was Katy's uncle, the doctor was her cousin; they were all on Katy's side; they helped her with her lessons; they encouraged her in this morbid and unhealthy desire for learning, and the teacher did not dare to refuse her. The difficulties of the civil service examination appalled him; he could never pass; he must at all costs keep the Millerstown school.

Occasionally, as of old, Katy corrected him, but now her corrections were involuntary and were immediately apologized for.

"You must not say 'craddle'; you must say 'crawl' or 'creep,'" directed Katy. "Ach, I am sorry! I did not mean to say that! But how"—this with desperate appeal—"how can I learn if you do not make it right?"

Sometimes Katy threatened poor Mr. Carpenter with Greek; then Mr. Carpenter would have welcomed the Socratic cup.

"My patience is all," he groaned. "Do they take me for a dictionary? Do they think I am a encyclopædia?"

Still, through the long winter Katy's relatives continued to spoil her. In Millerstown there has never been any objection to educating women simply because they are women. The Millerstown woman has always had exactly what she wanted. The normal schools and high schools in Pennsylvania German sections have always had more women students than men. If Katy wanted an education, she should have it; indeed, in the sudden Gaumer madness, Katy should have had the moon if she had asked for it and if her friends could have got it for her. Her grandfather and grandmother talked about her as they sat together in the evenings while Katy was extracting knowledge from the squire or from the doctor or from Mr. Carpenter, never dreaming that they were rapidly ruining the Benjamin of their old age. They had trained many children, and the squire had admonished all Millerstown, but Katy was never admonished by any of them. They liked her bright speech, they liked her ambition, they allowed themselves the luxury of indulging her in everything she wanted.

"She is that smart!" Bevy Schnepp expressed the opinion of all Katy's kin. "When she is high gelernt [learned], she will speak in many woices [tongues]."

Of all her relatives none spoiled Katy quite so recklessly as young Dr. Benner. There was not enough practice in healthy Millerstown to keep him busy, and Katy amused and entertained him. He liked to take her about with him in his buggy; he liked to give her hard problems, and to see to what lengths of memorizing she could go. Dr. Benner had theories about the education of children and he expounded them with the cheerful conceit of bachelors and maiden ladies. Dr. Benner, indeed, had theories about everything. It was absurd, to Dr. Benner's thinking, ever to restrain a healthy child from learning.

"Let 'em absorb," said he. "They won't take more than is good for 'em."

Dr. Benner was nearly enough related to Katy to be called a cousin, yet far enough removed to be stirred into something like jealousy at Katy's enthusiastic defense of the Koehlers. Katy should have no youthful entanglement—Dr. Benner remembered his own early development and flushed shamefacedly—to prevent her from growing into the remarkable person she might become. Dr. Benner decided that she must be got away from Millerstown as soon as possible; she had been already too much influenced by its German ways. Katy was meant for higher things. For a while young Dr. Benner felt that, pruned and polished, Katy was meant for him!

Meanwhile, Katy was to be saved from further contamination by being kept constantly busy. It pleased him to see her devoted to algebra, and he was constantly suggesting new departures in learning to her aspiring mind. It was unfortunate that each new suggestion included a compliment.

"I believe you could sing, Katy," said he, one March day, as, with Katy beside him, he drove slowly down the mountain road.

The landscape lay before them, wide, lovely, smiling, full of color in the clear sunshine. Far away a bright spot showed where the sun was reflected from the spires and roofs of the county seat; here and there the blast furnaces lifted the smoky banner of prosperous times.

Katy's cheeks were red, her dark hair blew across her forehead; it was with difficulty that she sat still beside the doctor. Spring was coming, life was coming.

"Sing?" said Katy, "I sing? I would like that better than anything I can think of in this world. I would rather be a singer than a missionary."

There was really nothing in the world that Katy would not have liked to do, except to stay in Millerstown and be inconspicuous; there was nothing in the world which she questioned her ultimate ability to do.

The doctor chuckled at Katy's comparison, which Katy had not intended to be funny.

"A classmate of mine is coming to see me next week. He teaches singing, and I'm going to get him to hear your voice. Won't that be fine, Katy?"

"Everything is fine," answered Katy.

The doctor's classmate arrived; for him Katy oh'd and ah'd through an astonishingly wide range. The young man was enthusiastic over her vocal possibilities.

"But he says you mustn't take lessons for another year," said Dr. Benner.

Again he and Katy were driving down the mountain road. They had climbed this afternoon to the Sheep Stable, and from there had gazed at the glorious prospect and had counted through a glass the scattered villages and the church spires in the county seat.

Katy's blood tingled in her veins. She had never dreamed that she could sing! She had never seen a picture which was painted by hand or she would now have been certain that she could become a great artist. She determined that some day she would return to the Sheep Stable alone and there sing for her own satisfaction. She had not sung her best for the doctor's friend down in grandmother's parlor, her best meaning her loudest. At the Sheep Stable there would be no walls to confine the great sounds she would produce.

"I will sing so that they hear me at Allentown," she planned. "I have no time now, but when I have time I will go once. It is so nice not to be dumb," finished Katy with great satisfaction.

The winter passed like a dream. Presently an interesting change came about in the Millerstown school and in its teacher. Perhaps Mr. Carpenter was mortified, as well as driven into it, but there sprang up somehow in his soul a decent, honest ambition. Delving painfully after forgotten knowledge, he studied to some purpose, and it began to seem as though even civil service questions might become easy and Mr. Carpenter pass his examinations at last. For the first few weeks of the new régime, he was able to keep only a lesson or two ahead of his pupils, but, little by little, that space widened. As if in pure spite, Mr. Carpenter learned his lessons. Then he assumed a superior and taunting air. Katy at the Christmas entertainment had looked at him with no more disgust than his face now expressed when his pupils gave wrong answers.

"'Gelt regiert die Welt, und Dummheit Millerstown'" (Gold rules the world and stupidity Millerstown)! Thus Mr. Carpenter adapted a familiar proverb in comment upon mistakes which he himself would have made a month ago.

Mr. Carpenter's pupils followed him steadily. David Hartman was more mature than the others and kept without difficulty at their head. As for Katy, with the help which Katy had out of school hours, even a dull child might have done well. It was help which was not unsuspected by David, but David held his tongue. David felt a fierce, unwilling pride in Katy's spirit.

But there was another sort of help being given and received which David resented jealously and indignantly, hardly believing the evidence of his own ears and eyes. David had taken some pleasure in the winter's work. He sat daily beside Katy in class; it was not possible for her to be always rude and curt. David was also puzzled and moved by a change in his father. He often met his father's glance when he lifted his own eyes suddenly, and it seemed to him that his father had come to realize his existence. His heart softened; he was pathetically quick to respond to signs of affection. It seemed to him that each day brought with it the possibility of some new, extraordinary happening. Several times he was on the point of putting his arm about his father's shoulders as he sat with his paper. Without being conscious of it, John Hartman showed outwardly the signs of the inward struggle. Never had his yearning, repressed love for the boy so tortured him, never had it demanded so insistently an outward expression. But he repressed himself a little longer. When he should have made all right with William Koehler, then would he yield to the impulses of fatherhood. That bound poor Hartman had set himself.

Katy remembered all her life, even if Alvin Koehler did not, the day on which Alvin set to work with diligence. He often looked at her curiously, as if he could not understand her. But Alvin gave earnest thought only to himself, to his hopeless situation with a half-mad and dishonest father and the dismal prospect of working in the furnace. His father seemed to be becoming more wild. There were times when Alvin feared violence at his hands. He talked to himself all day long, making frequent mention of John Hartman. Sometimes Alvin thought vaguely of warning the squire or John Hartman himself about his father. He believed less and less his father's crazy story.

Sometimes Alvin stared at Katy and blinked like an owl in his effort to account for her alternate shyness and kindness. Alvin was not accustomed to being treated kindly.

"And what will you do when you are educated?" he inquired.

"What will I do?" repeated Katy, her heart thumping as it always did when Alvin spoke to her. "I will teach and I will earn a great deal of money and travel over the whole world and buy me souvenirs. And I will sing."

It was very pleasant to tell Alvin of her prospects. Perhaps he would walk home with her from church on Sunday. Then how Essie Hill, in spite of all her outward piety, would hate her! The secret of mild Essie's soul was not a secret from Katy.

"Will you teach in a school like Millerstown?" asked Alvin.

"Millerstown! Never! It would have to be a bigger school than Millerstown."

Alvin looked up at Mr. Carpenter. It was recess and Mr. Carpenter was hearing a spelling class which had not learned its lesson for the morning recitation. Mr. Carpenter did not appear at his best, judged by the usually accepted standards of etiquette; he leaned back lazily in his chair, his feet propped on his desk, his hands clasped above his head; but to Alvin there was nothing inelegant in his attitude. Mr. Carpenter was an enviable person; he never needed to soil his hands or to have a grimy face or to carry a dinner pail.

"Teaching would be nice work," said Alvin drearily. "But I can never learn this Latin. I am all the time getting farther behind. It gets every day worse and worse."

"Oh, but you can learn it!" cried Katy, her face aglow. If he would only, only, let her help! "I will show you. Here are my sentences for to-day. The doctor went over them and he says they are all right." And blushing, with her heart pounding more than ever, Katy returned to her seat.

There was a difficult sentence in that day's lesson, a sentence over which David Hartman had puzzled and on which he failed. Then the teacher called on Alvin, simply as a matter of form. The school had begun to giggle a little when they heard his name. But now up he rose, the dull, the stupid, the ordinary, and read the sentence perfectly! At him David Hartman stared with scarlet face. He expected that the teacher would rise and annihilate Alvin, but the teacher passed to the next sentence. Mr. Carpenter was at the present time angry at David; he was rather glad he was discomfited. Such was the nature of Mr. Carpenter!

To Alvin David said nothing, but upon the shoulder of Katy Gaumer, putting on her cloak in the cupboard after school, David laid a heavy hand.

"You helped Alvin!" David's hand quivered with astonishment and anger and from the touch of Katy's shoulder. "It is cheating. Some day I am going to catch you at it before the whole school."

Before she could answer, if she could have made answer at all, David was gone. She hated him; she would help Alvin all she liked until he had caught up, and afterwards, too, if she pleased. Alvin had had no chance, and David had everything, a rich father, fine clothes and money. It was perfectly fair for her to help Alvin. She hated all the Hartmans. She was furiously angry and it hurt to be angry. It did not occur to her to be ashamed of Alvin who would accept a girl's translation. With a whirl and a flirting of her skirts, Katy sailed through the door and down the pike.

"You will sit in Millerstown!" she declared to the empty air. "But I am going away! Nothing ever happens in Millerstown. Millerstown is nothing worth!" Then Katy stood still, dizzy with all the glorious prospect of life. "I am going away! I am going away!"

CHAPTER VII
THE BEE CURE

In May the Millerstown school broke its fine record for diligence and steady attendance. The trees were in leaf, the air was sweet, the sky was dimmed by a soft haze, as though the creating earth smoked visibly. Locust blooms filled the air with their wine-like perfume, flowers starred the meadows. Grandmother Gaumer's garden inside its stone wall was so thickly set with hyacinths and tulips and narcissus that one wondered where summer flowers would find a place. Daily Katy gathered armfuls of purple flags and long sprays of flowering currant and stiff branches of japonica and bestowed them upon all who asked. Katy learned her lessons in the garden and planned for the future in the garden and thought of Alvin in the garden.

One day, unrest came suddenly upon the Millerstown boys; imprisonment within four walls was intolerable. Even Katy, yearning for an education, was affected by the warmth of the first real summer day, and Alvin Koehler wished for once that he had learned to swim, so that he could go with the other boys to bathe in Weygandt's dam. Alvin had not yet bought the red necktie; money was more scarce than ever this spring. Alvin's whole soul demanded clothes. He reflected upon the impression he had made upon Katy Gaumer; he observed the blush which reddened the smooth cheek of Essie Hill at his approach; he was increasingly certain that his was an unusual and attractive personality.

All through the long May afternoon, Katy studied with great effort, wishing that she, too, had played truant, and had climbed to the Sheep Stable as she had long planned, there to discover the full volume of her voice. She looked across at Alvin, but Alvin did not look back.

All the long afternoon Alvin gazed idly at his algebra, and all the long afternoon David Hartman and Jimmie Weygandt and Ollie Kuhns and the two Fackenthals and Billy Knerr and Coonie Schnable braved the wrath of Mr. Carpenter and played truant. First they traveled to the top of the mountain, then raced each other down over rock and fallen tree; and then, hot and tired, plunged into Weygandt's dam, which was fed by a cold stream from the mountain. When the water grew unendurable, they came out to the bank, rubbed themselves to a glow with their shirts, and hanging the shirts on bushes to dry, plunged back with shouts and splashing.

Mr. Carpenter did not greatly regret their absence. Upon him, too, spring fever had descended; he was too lazy to hear thoroughly the lessons of the pupils who remained. When the lowest class droned its "ten times ten iss a hundred," Mr. Carpenter was nodding; when they sang out in drowsy mischief, "'laven times 'laven iss a hundred and 'laven," Mr. Carpenter was asleep.

Mr. Carpenter planned no immediate punishment for his insubordinate pupils. The threat that he would tell their parents would be a powerful and valuable weapon in his hands for the rest of the term. The Millerstown parents had fixed theories about the heinousness of truancy.

But though Mr. Carpenter planned no punishment, punishment was meted out.

The stroke of the gods was curiously manifested. The next morning the disobedient seven ate their breakfasts in their several homes, in apparently normal health, unless a sudden frown or twist of lip or an outburst of bad temper might be said to constitute symptoms of disorder. One or two clung closely to the kitchen stove, though the day was even warmer than yesterday, and David Hartman visited surreptitiously the cupboard in which his mother kept the cough medicine with which he was occasionally dosed. With a wry face he took a long swallow from the bottle. Ollie Kuhns hung round his neck the little bag filled with asafœdita, which had been used in a similar manner for the baby's whooping-cough, and Jimmie Weygandt applied to himself the contents of a flask from the barn window, labeled "Dr. Whitcraft's Embrocation, Good for Man and Beast."

All left their homes and walked down the street with the stiff uprightness of carriage which had prevented their families from realizing how grievously they were afflicted. But one and all, they forgot their household chores. Billy Knerr's mother commanded him loudly to return and to fill the coal bucket, but Billy walked on as calmly as though he were deaf, and turned the corner into the alley with a thankful sigh.

There his erectness vanished. He stood and rubbed his knee with a mournful "By Hedes!" an exclamation of unknown origin and supposed profanity much affected by him and his friends, and henceforth walked with a limp. A little ahead was Ollie Kuhns, who, when shouted at, turned round bodily and stood waiting as stiff and straight as a wooden soldier. It was difficult to believe that this was the supple "Bosco, the Wild Man, Eats 'em Alive," who rattled his chains and raised his voice in terrifying howls in the schoolhouse cellar.

"Where have you got it?" demanded Billy.

"In my neck. I cannot move my head an inch."

"I have it in my knee. Indeed, I thought I would never get out of bed. My mom is hollering after me yet to fetch coal, but I could not fetch coal if they would chop off my head for it."

"Do you suppose any one else has it like this?"

Billy did not need to answer. The alley through which they walked led out to the pike, where moved before them a strange procession. The vanquished after a battle could have worn no more agonized aspect, could not have been much more strangely contorted.

"Both my arms are stiff," wailed Coonie Schnable. "It is one side as bad as the other."

"I can't bend over," announced the older Fackenthal, woefully. "I gave my little sister a penny to tie my shoes and not say anything."

"Did any of you tell your folks?" demanded Ollie. "Because if you did we will all get thrashed."

A spirited "No!" answered the insulting question.

"I got one licking from my pop last week," mourned Billy Knerr. "That will last, anyhow a while." The pain in Billy's knee was so sharp that sometimes, in spite of all his efforts, tears rolled down his cheeks. "You'll never catch me in that dam again, so you know it!"

"It wasn't the dam," said David Hartman, irritably. David could not indicate a spot on his body which did not ache. "We were too hot and we stayed too long. Ach! Ouch! I'll—" The other pupils of the Millerstown school had crowded about the sufferers and had jostled against them and David turned stiffly upon them with murder in his heart. But it was impossible to pursue even the nearest offender, Alvin Koehler. Instead David cried babyishly, "Just you wait once till I catch you!"

Not for the world would unsuspecting Alvin have jostled him intentionally. He knew better than to offer to any schoolmate a gage to physical conflict. They were too strong and there were too many of them. He saw the jostled David speak to Billy Knerr; he saw Billy Knerr approach him and he turned, ready for flight.

Then Alvin's eyes opened, his cheeks flushed. Billy called to him in a tone which was almost beseeching, "Wait once, Alvin! Do you want to make some money, Alvin?"

At once the red tie, still coveted and sighed for, danced before Alvin's longing eyes. Money! he would do anything to make money! He stood still and let Billy approach, not quite daring to trust him.

"What money?" he asked, hopefully, yet suspiciously.

"Come over here once," said Billy.

With great hope and at the same time with deadly fear, Alvin ventured toward the afflicted crew.

"We have the rheumatism," explained Billy.

"Where?" asked Alvin stupidly.

"Where!" stormed Ollie, with a violence which almost ended the negotiations. "Where! In our legs and our backs and our arms and our eyelids." Ollie was not one to wait with patience. "We will give you a penny each for a bee in a bottle. Will you sell us a bee in a bottle, or won't you?"

Alvin's eyes glittered; fright gave place to joy. There has always been a tradition in Millerstown that the sting of a bee will cure rheumatism. The theory has nothing to do with witchcraft or pow-wowing; it seems more like the brilliant invention of a practical joker. Perhaps improvement was coincident with the original experiment, or perhaps the powerful counter-irritant makes the sufferer forget the lesser woe. Bee stings are not popular, it must be confessed; they are used as a last resort, like the saline infusion, or like a powerful injection of strychnia for a failing heart.

Strangers had often come to be stung by William Koehler's bees, but Alvin had never heard that any of them were cured. Alvin himself had tried the remedy once for a bruise with no good result. One patient had used violent language and had demanded the return of the nickel which he had given William, and William was weak enough to pass it over. But now the red tie fluttered more and more enticingly before Alvin's eyes. If he could earn seven cents by putting seven of his father's bees in bottles, well and good. It made no difference if the patients were deceived about the salutary effects of bee stings.

Then into the quickened mind of Alvin flashed a brilliant plan.

"I will do it for three cents apiece," he announced with craft. "I cannot bann [charm] them so good as pop. They will perhaps sting me."

Alvin's daring coup was successful.

"Well, three cents, then. But you must get them here by recess." Ollie Kuhns groaned. He was not used to pain, and it seemed to him that his agony was spreading to fresh fields. "Clear out or the teacher will get you and he won't let you go. He's coming!"

With a great spring, Alvin dropped down on the other side of the stone fence, and lay still until the teacher had shepherded his flock into the schoolroom. By this time not only the red tie, but a whole new suit dazzled the eyes of Alvin. Old man Fackenthal bottled his cough cure and sold it all about the county. Why should not bees be bottled and labeled and sold? If their sting was supposed to be so valuable a cure, they would be a desired commodity. Alvin had told a lie when he had said he could not "bann" bees as well as his father, for he had over them the same hypnotic influence. He saw himself spending the rest of his life raising them and catching them and bottling them and selling them. There would have to be air holes through the corks of the bottles so that they could breathe, and a few drops of honey within to nourish them, but with these provisions they could be shipped far and wide.

"They would be powerful mad when they were let out," said Alvin to himself, as he lay in the lee of the schoolhouse fence. "The people would get their money's worth."

Alvin saw suddenly all the old people in the world stiff and sore and all the young people afflicted like Ollie and his friends. He did not wish for any of them such a fate. He had various weaknesses, but a vindictive spirit was not one of them. He saw only the possibilities of a great business. Hearing the schoolhouse bell, and knowing that all were safely within doors, he started across the fields and up the mountain-side.

The bargain was consummated in the woodshed, a little frame building leaning against the blank wall of the schoolhouse. Alvin, hurrying back from his house, scrambling over fences, weary from his long run, thought that he was too early with the wares in the basket on his arm. Or could it be, alas! that he was late and recess was over? That would be too cruel! With relief he heard the sound of voices in the woodshed where his patients awaited him.

The truants had endured an hour and a half of torture. They anticipated punishment for yesterday's misdemeanor, and they had a deadly fear that that punishment would be physical. Anxiously now from the woodshed, where they could lie at their ease, they listened for Alvin.

"Perhaps he won't come back," suggested Billy Knerr. "Perhaps he cannot catch the bees."

Recess was all over but five minutes, and the disheartened sufferers were expecting the bell, when Alvin appeared. David Hartman had collected the money against such necessity for haste, and, indeed, had advanced most of it from his well-lined pocket. Only in such dire trouble would he have treated with Alvin Koehler; only in this agony would he have bought from any one such a pig in a poke. If he had been himself, he would have made Alvin open the basket and would have examined the contents to be sure that Alvin was playing fair. But now, with only two minutes to cure himself and his friends of their agony, there was no time for the ordinary inspection of the articles of trade.

The commodities exchanged hands; twenty-one pennies into Alvin's outstretched palm, the basket into David's. It took David not much more than one of his hundred and twenty seconds to open the basket lid, even though it fitted closely and needed prying. A low, angry murmur, which the boys had not heard in their pain, changed at once to a loud buzz, and suddenly the hearts of the most suffering failed them. But the basket lid was off, and with it came the lid of a fruit jar which stood within. The bees were not in separate bottles—Alvin maintained stoutly that separate bottles had not been stipulated—so that one sting could be applied at a time, like a drop of medicine from a pipette; they were, or, rather, they had been, in a broad-mouthed jar, whose lid, as I have said, came off with the basket lid.

Moreover, at this instant the door of the woodshed, impelled by a gentle May breeze, blew shut and the latch dropped on the outside. There were seven boys penned into the woodshed and there were at least a hundred bees. Alvin had been in too much of a hurry to count the precious things he sold. He had held the jar before the outlet of the hive and the bees had rushed into it. Granted that honey bees sting but once, and granted that thirty of these bees did not sting at all, there were still ten for each patient.

Wildly the frantic prisoners batted the bees about with their bare hands. There were no hats, there was nothing in the empty woodshed which could be used as a weapon. Piteously they yelled, from great David Hartman to the eldest of the Fackenthals.

The uproar reached the ears of Alvin, who was just entering the schoolhouse door and Alvin fled incontinently to the gate and down the road. It penetrated to the schoolroom and brought Mr. Carpenter rushing angrily out. He had rung the school bell; his pupils did not respond; he thought now that their yells were yells of defiance. Emboldened by yesterday's success they had arranged some new anarchy. Whatever may have been the faults of Mr. Carpenter, he was physically equal to such a situation, short and slender though he was. He tore open the woodshed door; he caught Ollie Kuhns and shook him before any one could explain. Then, as he reached for the collar of David Hartman, one of the bees, which had not already committed suicide by stinging, lit on his hand. The pain did little to pacify the teacher. The boys, seized one after the other, had no shame strong enough to keep them from crying. Herded into the schoolroom, David at the tail end with the teacher's grasp on his ear, they forgot their rheumatism, they forgot the girls, they forgot even Alvin himself, who was by this time flying down the road. They laid their heads upon their desks, and Mr. Carpenter, dancing about, demanded first of one, then of the other, an explanation of this madness. Mr. Carpenter forgot his objections to Pennsylvania German; in this moment of deep anguish he was compelled to have recourse to his native tongue.

"What do you mean?" roared Mr. Carpenter. "What is this fuss? Are you crazy? You will catch it! Be quiet! Go to your seats! It will give an investigation of this! Ruhig!!"

In reality Mr. Carpenter himself was producing most of the confusion. The grief of those at whom he stormed was silent; they still sat with heads bent upon their desks. At them their schoolmates gaped, for them the tender-hearted wept.

As Alvin flew down the pike he began to be frightened. He was not repentant, not with twenty-one coppers in his pocket! He had a nickel already and now the beautiful tie was his. He could not go at once to purchase it for fear that the smitten army behind him might rally and pursue, nor did he wish to hide his money about the house for fear that his father might find it. He decided that he would get himself some dinner and then go walking upon the mountain. It would be well to be away from home until the time for his father's return. To his house the lame legs of his schoolmates might follow him, there their lame arms seize him, but to the Sheep Stable they could not climb. He did not realize that, as he crossed the fields above his father's house, he was for a moment plainly exposed to the view of the Millerstown school.

Tired, certain that he was out of reach of the enemy, Alvin lay down on the great rock which formed the back of the little cave. His heart throbbed; he was not accustomed to such strenuous exertion of body or to such rapid and determined operations of mind. He was even a little frightened by his own bravery and acuteness. He thought for a long time of himself and for a little time of Katy Gaumer and Essie Hill; then, deliciously comfortable in the spring sunshine, he fell asleep.

For three hours Alvin lay still on the great rock. Occasionally a chestnut blossom drifted down on his cheek, and was brushed drowsily away; occasionally the chatter of a squirrel, impatient of this human intrusion, made him open his eyes heavily. But each time he dropped into deeper sleep. The rock was hard, but Alvin was young and, besides, was not accustomed to a soft bed.

At the end of three hours he woke suddenly. It seemed to him that a dark cloud had covered the sun or that night had fallen. But a worse danger than storm or darkness was at hand.

Above him, almost touching his own, bent an angry face.

"Get up!" commanded a stern voice, and Alvin slid off the rock and stood up.

"Now, fight," David ordered. "I was stiff but I am not so much stiff any more. But the stiffness you may have for advantage. One, two, three!"

Even with the handicap of stiffness, the advantage was upon the side of David. He was strong; he was furiously and righteously angry; he had been shamed in the eyes of Millerstown. Katy Gaumer had seen his ignominy; she had whispered about him to Sarah Knerr. Alvin was a coward; he had long been cheating; he had accepted the help of a girl. Besides, Katy Gaumer was kind to him. For that crime his punishment had long been gathering.

Automatically Alvin raised his fist. Below them was the steep, rock-piled hillside; back of them was the rock wall of the Sheep Stable; and there was no help nearer than Millerstown, far below in its girdle of tender green. Even through the still air Alvin's cries could not be heard in the valley. He cried out when David struck him; he begged for mercy when David laid him on his back on the stony ground. He thought that there was now no hope for him; he was certain that his last hour had come. He expected that David would hurl him down over the edge of the precipice to the sharp rocks far below. He closed his eyes and moaned.

David had already determined to let his victim go. He was suddenly deeply interested in certain sensations within himself; he was distracted from his intention of administering to Alvin all the punishment he deserved. He felt a strange, uplifted sensation, a consciousness of strength; he was excited, thrilled. Never before in his life had he acted so swiftly, so entirely upon impulse. The yielding body beneath him, Alvin's fright, made him seem powerful to himself. The world was suddenly a different place; he wanted now to be alone and to think.

But David had no time to think. As unexpectedly as though sent from heaven itself arrived the avenger. Katy Gaumer had found time dull and heavy on her hands. Alvin had vanished; there would be the same lessons for the next day since one third of the class was absent and one third incapacitated. Katy was amused at the tears of David and his friends. A bee sting was nothing, nor yet a little stiffness! Katy had been once stung by a hornet and she had had a sprained ankle. Katy's heart was light; she had had recently new compliments from the doctor about her voice, and she had determined that this afternoon she would ascend to the Sheep Stable and startle the wide valley with song.

Katy was not lame or afflicted; she climbed gayly the mountain road. Nor was Katy afraid. She would not have believed that any evil could befall one so manifestly singled out by Providence for good fortune. She sang as she went; therefore she did not hear the wails of Alvin. Alvin cried loudly as he lay upon the ground; therefore he did not hear the song of Katy.

But Alvin felt suddenly the weight shoved from his body; he saw the conqueror taken unawares, thrust in his turn upon the ground; and he had wit and strength enough to scramble to his feet when the incubus was removed.

"Shame on you!" cried the figure in the red dress to the figure prone upon the ground. "Shame on you! You big, ugly boy, lie there!" Katy almost wept in her wrath. It was unfortunate for Katy that she should have been called upon to behold one toward whom her heart was already unwisely inclined thus in need of pity and help.

To Alvin's amazement the conqueror, a moment ago mighty in his rage, obeyed. The arrival of Katy, sudden as it was to him, was even more sudden to David. David was overwhelmed, outraged. He had not wit to move; he heard Katy's taunts, saw her stamp her foot; he heard her command Alvin to come with her, saw her for an instant even take Alvin by the hand, and saw Alvin follow her. His eyes were blinded; he rubbed them cruelly, then he turned over on his face and dug his hands into the ground. From poor David's hot throat there came again that childish wail. Conquered thus, David was also spiritless; he began to cry, "I want her! I want her! I want her!"

Aching, motionless, he lay upon the ground. With twitching tail the squirrel watched from his bough, chattering again his disgust at this queer human use of his abiding-place. The air grew cool, the blazing sun sank lower, and David lay still.

Meanwhile, down the mountain road together went Katy Gaumer and Alvin Koehler.

"He came on me that quick," gasped Alvin. He had brushed the clinging twigs from his clothes and had smoothed his hair. His curls lay damp upon his forehead, and his cheeks were scarlet, his chin uplifted.

Katy breathed hard.

"Well, I came on him quick, too!"

Alvin began to gasp nervously. Self-pity overwhelmed him.

"I have nothing in this world," mourned he. "This summer I will have to work at the furnace. I will have a hard life."

"But I thought you were going to have an education!" cried Katy.

"I cannot," mourned Alvin. "It is no use to try. I am alone in the world."

Katy turned upon him a glowing face.

"That is nonsense, Alvin! Everybody can have an education. There are schools where you can study and work, too. It is so at the normal school where they learn you to teach. I thought you were going to be a teacher, Alvin!"

"I was," said Alvin. "I would like to be a teacher."

"I will find out about those schools," promised Katy, forever eager to help, to plan. "I am going away; nothing would keep me in Millerstown. You must surely go, Alvin!"

"David Hartman can have everything," wailed Alvin, his aching bones making themselves felt. "He had no business to come after me. He has a rich pop. He—"

"He has a horrible pop," answered Katy. "He chased me once when I was little, and I never did him anything. Why, Alvin!" Katy stopped in the dusty road. "There is David's pop in his buggy at your gate!"

Alvin grew deathly pale, he remembered his father's madness, his threats, the crime which he had committed and which he blamed upon John Hartman.