improving Melrose. Enough intelligence and wealth had gathered there
to make the religious and educational advantages desirable, if not
superior. The houses were all well kept and attractive, and Melrose
was a charming place to live in, although remote from railways or
steamboats.

In the eastern part of the village, where the winding road began its
gentle descent to the river, stood a plain, but comfortable and
commodious school-room. It was erected years ago for a "Yankee
school teacher"; now it was occupied by Lizzie Heartwell, who had
been a favorite scholar of that same teacher years before, when she
was a very little girl. Consumption had long since laid that teacher
to rest, and time had brought that fair-haired little girl to fill
her place.

Over the bevy of factory-children, and those gathered from the
wealthier families too, Lizzie Heartwell now presided with great
dignity and grace, as school-mistress. In this sphere of life, her
faculties of mind, soul, and body, found full scope for perfect
development. Fond of children, loving study, happy always to help
those desiring knowledge, glad to enlighten the ignorant, Lizzie
Heartwell was happy, and useful too, in the work in which she was
employed. It was now more than three years since Lizzie left Madam
Truxton's, and she was now ending the second year of her teaching.
It was September. The woods were dying earlier than usual, in the
golden Indian summer. The days were sweet and delicious, and Melrose
was as attractive in its autumn loveliness as it had been in the
freshness of spring. It was toward the close of one of those
charming September days, when Lizzie Heartwell stepped to the door
of her school-room to watch the descending sun, and to see if she