the winter to early spring. None else knew of his intention except his
one friend, a Dr. Duchesne, a young Creole physician known to the people
of Wingdam as "Duchesny." He never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher,
Clytie, or any of his scholars. His reticence was partly the result of
a constitutional indisposition to fuss, partly a desire to be spared
the questions and surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly that he never
really believed he was going to do anything before it was done.

He did not like to think of Mliss. It was a selfish instinct, perhaps,
which made him try to fancy his feeling for the child was foolish,
romantic, and unpractical. He even tried to imagine that she would do
better under the control of an older and sterner teacher. Then she was
nearly eleven, and in a few years, by the rules of Red Mountain, would
be a woman. He had done his duty. After Smith's death he addressed
letters to Smith's relatives, and received one answer from a sister
of Melissa's mother. Thanking the master, she stated her intention of
leaving the Atlantic States for California with her husband in a few
months. This was a slight superstructure for the airy castle which the
master pictured for Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some
loving, sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred, might better
guide her wayward nature. Yet, when the master had read the letter,
Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and
afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to represent
Clytemnestra, labeled "the white girl," to prevent mistakes, and impaled
them upon the outer walls of the schoolhouse.

When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been gathered
in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a few
ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest Home, or
Examination. So the savants and professionals of Smith's Pocket were