of her drunken father. Then, raising her to her feet, he wrapped his
shawl around her, and, bidding her come early in the morning, he walked
with her down the road. There he bade her "good night." The moon shone
brightly on the narrow path before them. He stood and watched the bent
little figure as it staggered down the road, and waited until it had
passed the little graveyard and reached the curve of the hill, where it
turned and stood for a moment, a mere atom of suffering outlined against
the far-off patient stars. Then he went back to his work. But the lines
of the copybook thereafter faded into long parallels of never-ending
road, over which childish figures seemed to pass sobbing and crying into
the night. Then, the little schoolhouse seeming lonelier than before, he
shut the door and went home.

The next morning Mliss came to school. Her face had been washed, and her
coarse black hair bore evidence of recent struggles with the comb,
in which both had evidently suffered. The old defiant look shone
occasionally in her eyes, but her manner was tamer and more subdued.
Then began a series of little trials and self-sacrifices, in which
master and pupil bore an equal part, and which increased the confidence
and sympathy between them. Although obedient under the master's eye,
at times during recess, if thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, Mliss
would rage in ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage,
finding himself matched with his own weapons of torment, would seek
the master with torn jacket and scratched face and complaints of the
dreadful Mliss. There was a serious division among the townspeople on
the subject, some threatening to withdraw their children from such evil
companionship, and others as warmly upholding the course of the master
in his work of reclamation. Meanwhile, with a steady persistence that
seemed quite astonishing to him on looking back afterward, the master
drew Mliss gradually out of the shadow of her past life, as though it