by jingo, she orter have it, for anything like the voice of
her I never heerd. She sung for us that evening after supper
and I thought 'twas an angel singing. It just went through me
like a shaft o' light. The Spencer young ones are crazy over
her already. She's got twenty pupils around here and in
Grafton and Avonlea."

When the Old Lady had found out everything Crooked Jack could
tell her, she went into the house and sat down by the window
of her little sitting-room to think it all over. She was
tingling from head to foot with excitement.

Leslie's daughter! This Old Lady had had her romance once.
Long ago--forty years ago--she had been engaged to Leslie
Gray, a young college student who taught in Spencervale for
the summer term one year--the golden summer of Margaret
Lloyd's life. Leslie had been a shy, dreamy, handsome fellow
with literary ambitions, which, as he and Margaret both firmly
believed, would one day bring him fame and fortune.

Then there had been a foolish, bitter quarrel at the end of
that golden summer. Leslie had gone away in anger, afterwards
he had written, but Margaret Lloyd, still in the grasp of her
pride and resentment, had sent a harsh answer. No more letters
came; Leslie Gray never returned; and one day Margaret wakened
to the realization that she had put love out of her life for
ever. She knew it would never be hers again; and from that
moment her feet were turned from youth to walk down the valley
of shadow to a lonely, eccentric age.