six weeks away from home. She wrote to each man on the list of
school directors she had taken from Nancy Ellen's desk. Some
answered that they had their teachers already engaged, others made
no reply. One bright spot was the receipt of a letter from Nancy
Ellen saying she was sending her best dress, to be very careful of
it, and if Kate would let her know the day she would be home she
would meet her at the station. Kate sent her thanks, wore the
dress to two lectures, and wrote the letter telling when she would
return.

As the time drew nearer she became sickeningly anxious about a
school. What if she failed in securing one? What if she could
not pay back Agatha's money? What if she had taken "the wings of
morning," and fallen in her flight? In desperation she went to
the Superintendent of the Normal and told him her trouble. He
wrote her a fine letter of recommendation and she sent it to one
of the men from whom she had not heard, the director of a school
in the village of Walden, seven miles east of Hartley, being
seventeen miles from her home, thus seeming to Kate a desirable
location, also she knew the village to be pretty and the school
one that paid well. Then she finished her work the best she
could, and disappointed and anxious, entered the train for home.

When the engine whistled at the bridge outside Hartley Kate arose,
lifted her telescope from the rack overhead, and made her way to
the door, so that she was the first person to leave the car when
it stopped. As she stepped to the platform she had a distinct
shock, for her father reached for the telescope, while his
greeting and his face were decidedly friendly, for him. As they
walked down the street Kate was trying wildly to think of the best