A little to the left of the school-house was a
great granite boulder, rising almost to its eaves, which had been
loosened from the mountain-side two miles up the gorge when the
dam at the mouth of the pond gave way years before in a freshet,
and brought down and left, by the respectful torrent almost at the
threshold of the temple of knowledge.
Such was the scene the Indian summer sun looked down upon, while
the teacher stood gazing fixedly at the message which she held.
Curious faces peered out of the windows and through the door,
which she left ajar when she came into the hall. She took no note
of this infraction of discipline. "Any answer, ma'arn?" The
messenger-boy shifts his weight awkwardly upon the other foot, as
he asks, but receives no reply.
For two years Mollie Ainslie, with her assistants, had dispensed
the sweets of knowledge at "No. 5," to the children of the little
hamlet. The hazy morning light revealed a small, lithe figure,
scarcely taller than the messenger-boy that stood before her;
a fair, white face; calm, gray eyes; hair with a glint of golden
brown, which waved and rippled about a low, broad brow, and was
gathered in a great shining coil behind; and a mouth clear-cut and
firm, but now drawn and quivering with deep emotion. The comely head
was finely poised upon the slender neck, and in the whole figure
there was an air of self-reliance and power that accorded well with
the position which she held.
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