sunshine, over which cloud shadows rolled, broadened, and
vanished. Far below the fields a calm ocean slept bluely, and
sighed in its sleep, with the murmur that rings for ever in the
ear of those whose good fortune it is to have been born within
the sound of it.

Now and then Eric met some callow, check-shirted, bare-legged lad
on horseback, or a shrewd-faced farmer in a cart, who nodded and
called out cheerily, "Howdy, Master?" A young girl, with a rosy,
oval face, dimpled cheeks, and pretty dark eyes filled with shy
coquetry, passed him, looking as if she would not be at all
averse to a better acquaintance with the new teacher.

Half way down the hill Eric met a shambling, old gray horse
drawing an express wagon which had seen better days. The driver
was a woman: she appeared to be one of those drab-tinted
individuals who can never have felt a rosy emotion in all their
lives. She stopped her horse, and beckoned Eric over to her with
the knobby handle of a faded and bony umbrella.

"Reckon you're the new Master, ain't you?" she asked.

Eric admitted that he was.

"Well, I'm glad to see you," she said, offering him a hand in a
much darned cotton glove that had once been black.

"I was right sorry to see Mr. West go, for he was a right good
teacher, and as harmless, inoffensive a creetur as ever lived.
But I always told him every time I laid eyes on him that he was