To-day William Bellus really opened the school, for not till he had
buried his face in his book did the general buzz begin.

That buzz was maddening. For three long hours I had to sit there and
listen to the children as they droned over and over their lessons. Yet
this was my life's work. To my care Six Stars had intrusted her young,
and I should be proud of that trust and earnest in its fulfilment. But
Tim's letter was in my pocket. It was full of the big things of this
life. It told of great struggles for great prizes, and the chalk dust
choked me when I thought of him, and then turned to myself as I stood
there, trying to demonstrate to half a dozen girls and boys that the
total sum of a single column of six figures was twenty-four. Tim had
been promoted and was a full-fledged clerk now. There were many steps
ahead for him, but he was going to climb them rung by rung; and what joy
there is in drawing one's self up by one's own strength! I was at the
top of my ladder--at the very pinnacle of learning in Black Log. Even
now I was unfolding to the marvelling eyes of the children of the valley
the mysteries of that great science, physical geography. I was
explaining to them the trend of the Rockies and the Himalayas, and of
other mountains I should never see; I was telling them why it snowed, and
unfolding the phenomena of the aurora borealis. Alexander with no more
worlds to conquer was a sorry spectacle. We pedagogues who have mastered
physical geography are Alexanders. But if I was bound to the pinnacle of
learning so that I could neither fly nor fall, I could at least watch Tim
as he struggled higher and higher. And Mary was watching with me! That
was what made my work that day seem doubly irksome and the hours trebly
long; for she was waiting to hear from him, and when the sun seemed to
rest on the mill gable I should be free to go to her. So the minutes
dragged. It made me angry. Ordinarily I speak quietly to the scholars,