to get me to take them into school if they were late or had been "kipping"—girls, too, sometimes; though they did not play truant regularly, as we did. It was a good thing in Breckonside to be my father's son. 

 Just after Scripture reading and catechism, if the vicar did not come to examine us—which was not often—we had half an hour's play, while the "Dissenters" had multiplication table and Troy weight, to keep them aware of themselves. So, while Mr. Mustard was rubbing his spectacles and telling us not to be longer away than half an hour, I took out my quill gun and cut a smart pellet with the end of it out of a slice of potato. Then I cut another with the opposite muzzle, and with my pretty, tiny ramrod I shot it under the desk. It took the end of Mr. Mustard's nose neatly, making a red bull's-eye, for which Freddy Allen was promptly whipped, because his mother was a widow and had no influence with the School Committee. 

 Now I had promised my mother to go to school that day, and not make my father angry again. Well, I had been to school, and had been dux of the catechism, which was surely enough glory and honour for one day. So soon, therefore, as we got out I made a rush down the street towards the bridge where was Elsie's house—a little cottage by the bridge end, all covered over with Virginia creeper and roses, though Nancy Edgar, the "outworker" with whom she lived, was quite poor, and the neighbours said it was a disgrace that she should make such a flaunting show, for all the world as if she was rich and could afford to buy plants from a nursery-man. But everything that Nancy had given her, or found thrown out as of no use, seemed to do with her, and grew to a marvel. 

 "I expect it is because I love them!" she said. But privately I thought it was because of Elsie. She was ever such a nice girl, Elsie Stennis, and I had kept friends with her, steady, ever since she came to Breckonside from Thorsby.  For she is a town girl, Elsie, and her father and mother are dead. But no nonsense about her—no love and stuff. She was what they call pretty, too, but not set up about it in the least, the way girls get. You would have liked her just as I did. Nearly every one did—except her grandfather. 

 Well, when I got to Nance Edgar's cottage, which stands back a bit from the road, with a joiner's yard at one side, and the road to Bewick stretching away on the other, I saw Elsie at the gable window. She had a book in her hand, her finger between the leaves.  "Come down, Elsie," I called up to her.  "I'm not going to school to-day. Come and see the new 

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