favorite in all the country-side.

Such was the family from which this young school miss was sprung.

The girl was just eighteen when she went to her new work. She had
received most of her education in a similar school, in a neighboring
district, where she had always led her classes, but had spent two
winters in a State Normal School. She was a trim body, compactly
built, had black hair and eyes, and a fresh, rosy complexion that is so
characteristic of her class. She could ride a fractious horse, milk,
sew, knit and cook, and had followed the plow more than one day; while
during harvest and corn-husking she had many a time "made a hand."
From this cause she was strong and well knit in all her frame, a
perfect picture of young womanly health and rustic beauty. She had a
soft, sweet voice and spoke without the slightest trace of a brogue, so
surely does a single generation Americanize such people, and was very
modest and retiring in her manners. Like her parents, she was a devout
Catholic.

It was hardly seven o'clock on an April morning when this girl unlocked
the schoolhouse door at the end of her long walk and let the fresh
spring breeze blow into its interior. It was a small building, with
one door, opening to the south, and six windows, two on each of three
sides, all darkened with tight board shutters. She threw all these
open and raised the sashes for a fuller sweep of the air, for the
school-roomish smell was stifling to one accustomed to wholesome,
out-of-door air. As soon as she felt free to take a long breath she
began to examine the room in which she was to go to work.

The floor was filthy beyond description. There was a hill of dry