before she called him. He turned. She was standing there quite white,
with tears in her widely opened orbs. The master felt that the right
moment had come. Going up to her, he took both her hands, and looking
in her tearful eyes, said, gravely, "Lissy, do you remember the first
evening you came to see me?"

Lissy remembered.

"You asked me if you might come to school, for you wanted to learn
something and be better, and I said--"

"Come," responded the child, promptly.

"What would YOU say if the master now came to you and said that he was
lonely without his little scholar, and that he wanted her to come and
teach him to be better?"

The child hung her head for a few moments in silence. The master waited
patiently. Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the couple, and
raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and gazed at them.
A squirrel ran halfway down the furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and
there stopped.

"We are waiting, Lissy," said the master, in a whisper, and the child
smiled. Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked, and a long
pencil of light stole through their interlaced boughs full on the
doubting face and irresolute little figure. Suddenly she took the
master's hand in her quick way. What she said was scarcely audible, but
the master, putting the black hair back from her forehead, kissed her;
and so, hand in hand, they passed out of the damp aisles and forest