his sympathetic comrades, Mr. Darrow added the final dreadful words:

"You are expelled."



CHAPTER II

HOOP-LA!


Andy Wildwood passed out of the village schoolhouse an anxious and
desolate boy.

The brightest of sunshine gilded the spires and steeples of the village.
It flooded highway and meadows with rich yellow light, but Andy,
swinging his school books over his shoulder, walked on with drooping
head and a cheerless heart.

"It's pretty bad, it's just the very worst!" he said with a deep sigh,
as he reached a stile and sat down a-straddle of it.

Andy tossed his books up into the hollow of a familiar oak near at hand.
Then he fell to serious thinking.

His gaze roving over the landscape, lit on the farmhouse of Jabez Dale.
It revived the recent allusion of the old schoolmaster.

"I didn't steal that calf," declared Andy, straightening up indignantly.
"Graham, who boards over at Millville, told us boys how Dale had sold a