He worked three hours with the young man that evening, and filled him with high ambition after hauling him out of his difficulty.

But of all difficulties the teacher had to deal with, Polly Vaughn was the greatest.  She was nearly perfect in all her studies, but a little mischievous and very dear to him.  “Pretty;” that is one thing all said of her there in Faraway, and they said also with a bitter twang that she loved to lie abed and read novels.  To Sidney Trove the word “pretty” was inadequate.  As to lying abed and reading novels, he was free to say that he believed in it.

“We get very indignant about slavery in the south,” he used to say; “but how about slavery on the northern farms?  I know people who rise at cock-crow and strain their sinews in heavy toil the livelong day, and spend the Sabbath trembling in the lonely shadow of the Valley of Death.  I know a man who whipped his boy till he bled because he ran away to go fishing.  It’s all slavery, pure and simple.”

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground,” said Ezra Tower.

“If God said it, he made slaves of us all,” said young Trove.  “When I look around here and see people wasted to the bone with sweat and toil, too weary often to eat the bread they have earned, when I see their children dying of consumption from excess of labour and pork fat, I forget the slaves of man and think only of these wretched slaves of God.”

But Polly was not of them the teacher pitied.  She was a bit discontented; but surely she was cheerful and well fed.  God gave her beauty, and the widow saw it, and put her own strength between the curse and the child.  Folly had her task every day, but Polly had her way, also, in too many things, and became a bit selfish, as might have been expected.  But there was something very sweet and fine about Polly.  They were plain clothes she wore, but nobody save herself and mother gave them any thought.  Who, seeing her big, laughing eyes, her finely modelled face, with cheeks pink and dimpled, her shapely, white teeth, her mass of dark hair, crowning a form tall and straight as an arrow, could see anything but the merry-hearted Polly?

“Miss Vaughn, you will please remain a few moments after school,” said the teacher one day near four o’clock.  Twice she had been caught whispering that day, with the young girl who sat behind her.  Trove had looked down, stroking his little mustache thoughtfully, and made no remark.  The girl had gone to work, then, her cheeks red with embarrassment.

“I wish you’d do me a favour, Miss Polly,” said the teacher, when they were alone.

She blushed deeply, and sat looking down as she fussed with her handkerchief.  She was a bit frightened by the serious air of that big young man.

“It isn’t much,” he went on.  “I’d like you to help me teach a little.  To-morrow morning I shall make a map on the blackboard, and while I am doing it I’d like you to conduct the school.  When you have finished with the primer class I’ll be ready to take hold again.”