droned out: "He's away down at the shore side, sir. I saw him
fishing."

"Ah! s-sneak!" hissed one of the boys near him; "what for need you
tell?"

"Now, now!" said the master quietly. "None of that. Get along with
the lesson."

He glanced along the row of faces before him.

"Thora Kinlay," he said, "finish the conjugation where Jessie Grey
left off."

I was again at the window.

Mr. Drever looked towards a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl who stood
directly opposite to him. At her throat there was a cowslip--a rare
flower in Orkney. She wore a rough, homespun frock, as all the
other girls did; but, for some reason which I cannot explain, Thora
Kinlay was quite unlike her companions. Such was the refined
gentleness of her nature that I can compare her only with the
tern--the most beautiful, I believe, of all our sea birds.

"Regerer, I might be ruled; regereris, thou mightst be ruled," she
began, and as she repeated the conjugation, I listened with
attention not unmixed with envy, for she was the best scholar in
the whole school.

As Thora concluded, the schoolmaster gave her a word of praise, and