softly, occasionally glancing behind him at the master who was coldly
absorbed at his desk. Presently he arose, carefully put his books away,
symmetrically piling them in a pyramid beside Mr. Ford's motionless
elbow, and then lifting his feet with high but gentle steps went to the
peg where his coat and hat were hanging. As he was about to put them on
he appeared suddenly struck with a sense of indecorousness in dressing
himself in the school, and taking them on his arm to the porch resumed
them outside. Then saying, "I clean disremembered I'd got to see a man.
So long, till to-morrow," he disappeared whistling softly.

The old woodland hush fell back upon the school. It seemed very quiet
and empty. A faint sense of remorse stole over the master. Yet he
remembered that Uncle Ben had accepted without reproach and as a good
joke much more direct accusations from Rupert Filgee, and that he
himself had acted from a conscientious sense of duty towards the man.
But a conscientious sense of duty to inflict pain upon a fellow-mortal
for his own good does not always bring perfect serenity to the
inflicter--possibly because, in the defective machinery of human
compensation, pain is the only quality that is apt to appear in the
illustration. Mr. Ford felt uncomfortable, and being so, was naturally
vexed at the innocent cause. Why should Uncle Ben be offended because
he had simply declined to follow his weak fabrications any further? This
was his return for having tolerated it at first! It would be a lesson to
him henceforth. Nevertheless he got up and went to the door. The figure
of Uncle Ben was already indistinct among the leaves, but from the
motion of his shoulders he seemed to be still stepping high and softly
as if not yet clear of insecure and engulfing ground.

The silence still continuing, the master began mechanically to look
over the desks for forgotten or mislaid articles, and to rearrange