CHAPTER V.

Every hour of that black Monday cast Flea into deeper darkness. Because she was found wanting in arithmetic she was put, in all her classes, with girls whose ignorance she despised. For two years she had studied the same lessons with Bea, and recited them as well. Yet Bea smiled sweetly down upon her from the head of the "big girls'" bench, and Flea swelled with angry mortification between Lucy Wilson, who could not read to herself without whispering the words, and Emma Jones, whose recitation of, "Vermont is a small _ro_-mantick and pictures-_quee_ State," was one of last session's jokes. At "play-time" Mr. Tayloe went to Greenfield, less than half a mile distant, for a comfortable luncheon. As soon as he was out of sight every tongue was loosened. The boys whooped and raced to and fro; the girls knotted together in groups under the trees and upon the steps to eat their snacks and discuss the incidents of the morning.

Flea slipped away unperceived, luncheon-bag in hand, to the welcome cover of the woods. She thought she was glad that nobody stopped or stayed her. Really the indifference of her mates to what she had endured and what she now suffered pierced her with a new sorrow.

"Nobody cares! nobody cares!" she cried aloud, plunging into the forest until the voices of the shouting boys could not be heard. She was alone at last. Casting herself down in the friendly shade, she let all the waves of wounded feeling, the billows of wounded pride, go over her head.

Up to this morning she had been a happy child, making much of her few and simple pleasures. She liked everybody she knew in her small world, and loved nearly everybody. She had never been guilty of a wilful unkindness; hatred and revenge were unknown passions. The unpleasant smile that curved the schoolmaster's lips so far upward as partly to close his eyes would have straightened into a laugh of genuine amusement had he watched, from behind the tree-boles, the look that settled upon the face, blotched with weeping when, by-and-by, the girl sat up, her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms gripping her legs. She had cried her eyes dry. She believed that she could never cry again--certainly not in that man's presence. No! not if he were to beat her to death!

"If he ever strikes me I will _kill_ him!" she muttered, her lips curling back from the locked teeth. "It would be as right as father's killing that snake. I hope I shall have a chance to pay him back some day. I am in his power now, but a time may come! A time may come!"

She was genuinely miserable, yet she could not help being melodramatic. She was still living in her story, but the complexion of the story was changed. Yesterday she would not have harmed the meanest thing that lived. This morning to make and to see others happy was the purest joy she knew. Her heart seemed to this dreadful day to have been a placid pool, clear because it had never been stirred up from the bottom. This man--the first creature she had ever hated--had brought to the top such mire and dirt as she had never dreamed were there.

By-and-by she ate her luncheon. She was only a child, and with childhood the sharpest edge of the sharpest grief is soon dulled. When her hunger was somewhat appeased she became critical of the remnants of her "snack."

"Cold batter-bread!" turning it over with the tips of her fingers. "I wonder who mother thinks cares for _cold_ batter-bread?"

Batter-bread is a mixture of Indian meal, milk, and eggs beaten light and baked in a mould. When hot and fresh it is puffy and delicious. In cooling it becomes heavy and sticky. Flea's misery was settling into crossness, very much after the fashion of the bread. She took one bite out of the solid chunk, and tossed the rest as far as she could send it over the bushes. It was aimed at the creek that flowed a dozen yards away, but fell short and landed in the sand. Flea could see it lying there while she crunched a crisp ginger-cake with teeth that snapped pettishly upon it.

"I'll tell mother not to put cold batter-bread into my snack to-morrow," she resolved.

At the thought a home picture arose in her mind. Of her mother, with tired eyes and wrinkled forehead, the baby tugging at her skirts and whining to be taken up, while the busy housewife stood at the dining-room table, cutting ham and buttering bread, and selecting the nicest ginger-cakes for her daughters' midday meal. She had forgotten nothing, not even the clean napkin, although Calley was teasing her on one side and baby on the other, and Dee was asking everybody where he could have put his slate, and Chaney was waiting, a wooden bread-tray on her hip, for "Mistis to give out dinner." Flea concluded that she had a good mother. If she did scold sometimes, she had reason enough for it, and Flea at least, whatever might be said of the other children, richly deserved all the fault-finding she got at home. Her mother had said to herself when she cut and buttered that slice of batter-bread,

"How my hungry little girl will enjoy this at play-time!"

And the ungrateful little wretch had thrown it away.

The Flea Grigsby who ten minutes ago was planning revenge and even murder got up meekly, crept under the hazel and sweet-gum bushes, picked up the despised chunk, carried it back to her seat at the foot of a hickory-tree, and proceeded to eat it. Every mouthful went against palate and stomach. The butter had soaked into it and left it clammy. The sand stuck to it, and Flea could not brush it quite clean. The gritty morsels set her teeth on edge, and reminded her of stories she had read of penances done for sins committed--hair-cloth shirts, and peas in one's shoes, and floggings upon the naked shoulders, and all that. The stories helped her to persevere until the last crumb was swallowed. The task was further lightened by meditation upon her mother's many sterling virtues. For instance, how she took especial pains to give the children who went to school something to eat that was a little better than the children left at home would have. She said "studying was hungry work."

In reality Mrs. Grigsby had said, "stedyin' is mighty hongry work." Flea would not think of that or other peculiarities that had sometimes made her ashamed of her mother. Her mother was not to blame that her parents had not sent her to school for as many years as she meant to send her children.

At this point of her musings something bitter and burning arose in the girl's softened heart.

"Poor mother!" she muttered. "Wouldn't she be mad if she knew what has happened to-day? As for father, he'd be ready to mash him like he did the moccasin."

The rule quoted as "a good law" by Major Duncombe, never to tell tales out of school, was one of the first lessons learned by every boy and girl of that school. Traditions of awful floggings administered by former teachers for violations of the rule were familiar to all. A large majority of parents were in the league with the schoolmasters in this matter. Many fathers not only refused to listen to their children's complaints, but punished them for bringing them. Boys actually carried for weeks the marks of the whip, and took pains to hide them from their parents lest they might be obliged to tell how they got them. A tell-tale was despised everywhere. To tell tales out of school branded boy or girl as for a disgraceful crime.

If Flea had battles to fight, she must fight them single-handed. The authority of the Old Field schoolmaster was what she had learned in Olney's geography to call "absolute despotism."

"He's worse than Turkey and China," she said, drawing the strings of her "snack-bag" viciously tight. "He's meaner and crueler than a satrap--or--a _Mameluke_!"

The sound of voices and laughter broke in upon her gloomy reverie. Peeping between the overhanging boughs she saw what made her crouch lower in her covert.

The creek was wide, and at this season shallow at this point. When swollen by winter and spring rains it was so deep and swift that a bridge had been built over it high above the present level. Coming from the direction of Greenfield, two women and a man had just reached the bridge. They were Miss Emily and Miss Eliza Duncombe, and Mr. Tayloe. He was on his way back to school, and the young ladies had walked part of the way with him. The party stopped on the bridge and leaned over the railing.

"If Miss Emily had seen him this morning, she wouldn't let him stand so close to her," reflected Flea. "She'd sooner push him into the water."

Miss Emily had no present intention of doing anything of the sort. She seemed upon the best possible terms with her brothers' teacher. He had a gun upon his shoulder. The woods were full of game, and he might knock over a bird or "an old hare" in his walks back and forth to the school-house. In the noon stillness Flea could hear what Miss Emily's high-pitched voice was saying:

"I tell you I _can_ shoot beautifully. Just let me try."

And in answer to something he said: "I _dare_ you to hit that stump in the water over yonder. The stump with the _red_ leaves on it."

Mr. Tayloe raised the gun and fired. The leaves flew in every direction, and the shot pattered in the water.

Miss Emily clapped her hands and screamed with delight; there was a confused chatter for a moment, all three talking together, while Mr. Tayloe reloaded the gun and handed it to the young lady.

"She ain't aiming it right," thought Flea, regretfully, as Miss Emily raised the short fowling-piece awkwardly but boldly to her shoulder, and laid her cheek down upon the stock. There was a report, and a rain of bird-shot fell, not in the water this time, but upon the clump of bushy shrubs in which Flea was hiding, and she felt a sharp cut across her cheek. With a cry she could not quite stifle she rushed away into the woods, too much frightened to do anything but fly from the chance of a second shot.

She did not hear the shout of laughter from the bridge.

"You peppered a pig that time, Miss Emily," said the teacher to the unskilful sportswoman. "You did not come within fifty feet of the stump. It's lucky the pig was so far off. I heard him squeal as he scampered into the woods. So you did hit something after all. That's a good one!"

He went off into another fit of laughter.

The blood was oozing from the cut when Flea stopped running, and she put up her hand to feel how much she was hurt. It was a mere scratch, for the shot was light and almost spent by the time it reached her. Her fright over, her spirits arose with a bound. A happy thought had entered her ever-active brain.

Major Duncombe had no patience with carelessness in the use of firearms. She had seen him angry but once in her life, and that was when one of his boys pointed an empty gun at his brother. The father had laid his riding-whip smartly about the boy's shoulders, and forbidden him to touch a gun again for a month.

"I would cowhide any man who aimed even a broomstick at me," he said. "'Gun' and 'fun' should never go together except in a rhyme."

Miss Emily would be scolded by her father and made fun of by everybody else, and feel dreadfully besides if anybody ever found out what she had done. Flea would lock up the secret in the recesses of her own heart, as any other heroine would, for the sake of the beloved object. She hoped the scratch would leave a scar--just a tiny thread of a scar--that would not disfigure her, and would always be a token of how much she loved her dear, dear _Miss_ Emily.

"It would be a badge of merit--an honorable scar!" she said, aloud. "I am glad, _glad_ it happened!"

A quarter-mile from the school-house, the hill on which it stood fell away abruptly in a bank out of which a clear little spring ran through a pipe into a trough below. There Flea paused to wash her face and hands, and to rinse the handkerchief she had used to stanch the blood. She even took pains to make herself look more tidy than usual, wetting her "Shetland-pony" forelock, and combing it back with the round comb which she wore for the first time that day. Then she smoothed her apron, and swinging her luncheon-bag around and around as she went, she tripped blithely up the slope into the clearing that made the play-ground. At the same instant the figure of the teacher came into view from the opposite quarter, and there was a rush and a scuffle among boys and girls to get into the school-room before he arrived.

Thus it happened that nobody noticed the raw scratch crossing Flea's left cheek, about an inch below the eye, until the dictionary class was called up to recite. Much attention was paid in the Old Field school to spelling and definition, the text-book being Walker's Dictionary. Two columns of words and definitions under the head of A were assigned to the class of five girls and six boys, who had been busy studying the lesson ever since the beginning of the afternoon session. For no reason except that it pleased him to put down in every way the girl to whom he had taken a dislike, Mr. Tayloe placed Flea Grigsby at the foot of the row ranged in front of his chair. The scholars stood while reciting, their hands close to their sides, their chins level, and shoulders back. When a word was misspelled, or a wrong definition given, it was passed down the line until somebody supplied the proper spelling and meaning, and went above those who had failed.

Flea mounted steadily and rapidly in this exercise, spelling being one of her strong points. She was the fourth from the head of the class when the word "adolescence" was given out. The first one who tried it put in two d's, the second left out the first c, the third spelled the word right, but had forgotten the meaning. Flea instinctively cast her eyes down, and tried with all her generous might not to look elated as the trial in which she knew she would succeed drew nearer and nearer.

"Felicia Grigsby!" said the teacher.

"Ado--"

"Instead of staring that ink-spot out of countenance, suppose you have the politeness to look at me when I speak to you." He broke off to stare at her. "What have you been doing to your face?"

Flea put her hand up to her wounded check, and felt that it was wet. The water had checked the bleeding for a while, but now specks of blood, like tiny beads, were starting out along the line of the cut. Her blush at the discovery looked to the master like the confusion of guilt.

"Can't you speak?" he said, roughly. "You are usually over-ready with your tongue. With whom have you been fighting, _now_?"

A titter from the school behind her made Flea color yet more deeply.

"With nobody," she answered, in a low tone. "My face got scratched in the woods."

"Got scratched? That does pretty well for the crack scholar of the county, who is going to make us all proud of her some day. Why don't you say what scratched you?"

Flea was mute; not with alarm, although she would not have been surprised had he hurled the dictionary at her head. She had seen that done to a girl by a former teacher. The book had knocked the girl down. In falling she had cut her head against the corner of a bench, and lain quite still for a minute before she could get up. Flea recollected it all in a flash, yet without being afraid. Her eyes, fixed upon the teacher, were bright, her lips were compressed. No torture should force from her what might grieve and annoy Miss Emily. Stories from _Fox's Book of Martyrs_ and _Tales of the Covenanters_, and a Sunday-school book, _The Lives of the Saints_, which she read last summer, thronged her mind. It was grand to be a heroine to save one she loved. It was sublime to be a martyr. Who was it who had written of somebody who "played the man in the fire"?

Mr. Tayloe's eyes faded almost white, the glow of metal seven times heated, that gave him an ominous look. The scholars ceased tittering and held their breaths. He took out his watch. Flea noticed that it was gold and very handsome, and was fastened to a heavy gold chain of curious workmanship, like the scales of a fish. There were initials on the back of the watch. She wondered if it had been his father's, and was left to him as the oldest son.

"I will give you exactly three minutes, Felicia Grigsby, to say, 'Mr. Tayloe, a thorn scratched my face as I came through the woods.' Obstinacy is what I will not stand."

In the deathlike hush of the room the ticking of the watch in his hand was painfully audible to the scholars of the back benches. Each tick seemed to go in one of Flea's ears and out at the other, trailing a red-hot wire with it. She could not stop counting them, try though she might. There was no thought of yielding in her mind, but she was getting faint with suspenseful dread. Never until now had she openly defied lawful authority. What was going to happen?

"Three!" said the teacher, returning the watch to his pocket. "Are you ready to do as you are told?"

Flea swept her dry lips with her tongue, and swallowed hard. "I can't say what you want me to say; it wouldn't be true."

"Aha! what _is_ true, then?"

Again she was dumb.

"Go to your seat, and do not touch a book, or move, until I give you leave, if you have to sit there until to-morrow morning."

When the school was dismissed, an hour later, the rest of the scholars filed out of the room, staring hard at Flea as they passed.

Mr. Tayloe had letters to write. Not a sound was heard for the next half-hour, except the scratching of his pen and the rustling of the dried aspen-leaves blown by the wind into the open door and along the aisle. Flea watched them in a miserable, mechanical way. An odd stupor was stealing over her. Her nerves were wellnigh worn to threads, and although the stout heart stood firm, the waiting for an unknown punishment was horrible, and used up what strength positive disgrace had left to her.

Mr. Tayloe wrote on briskly. If Flea had read the letter over his shoulder, she would have seen that it began, "My dear Mother," and was full of merry, affectionate sayings.

Presently he looked up suddenly toward the door, smiled, hustled his papers into his desk, caught up his hat, and walked quickly down the aisle. In going out, he slammed the door behind him.

She was, then, to be left there all night!

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

RICK DALE.

BY KIRK MUNROE.