"Well, I'm not goin' to tell you the news," Webb declared, with a
touch of propitiation in his voice; and, not a little discomfited, he
turned away, employing a quicker step than usually characterized his
movement.

"The young scamp!" he said. "He's gittin' entirely too forward--
entirely, for a boy as young as he is, and me his uncle."

Crossing a strip of meadow land, then picking his way between the rows
of a patch of corn, and skirting a cotton-field, he came out into a
red-clay road. Along this he walked till he reached a little meeting-
house snugly ensconced among big trees at the foot of the mountain.
The white frame building, oblong in shape, had four windows with green
outer blinds on each of its two sides, and a door at the end nearer
the road. As Webb traversed the open space, where, on Sundays, horses
were hitched to the trees and saplings, a drone as of countless bees
fell on his ears. To a native this needed no explanation. During five
of the week-days the building was used as a schoolhouse. The sound was
made by the students studying aloud, and John's niece, Dolly Drake,
had sole charge of them.

Reaching the door and holding his hat in his hand, Webb cautiously
peered within, beholding row after row of boys and girls whose backs
were turned to him. At a blackboard on the platform, a bit of chalk in
her fingers, Dolly, a girl eighteen years of age, stood explaining an
example in arithmetic to several burly boys taller than herself. Webb
glanced up at the sun.

"They haven't had recess yet," he reckoned. "I swear I'm sorry for