“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 in consumption, if ever a man was.  You look real healthy—­though you can’t aways tell by looks, either.  I had a brother complected like you, but he was killed in a railroad accident out west when he was real young.

“I’ve got a boy I’ll be sending to school to you next week.  He’d oughter gone this week, but I had to keep him home to help me put the pertaters in; for his father won’t work and doesn’t work and can’t be made to work.

“Sandy—­his full name is Edward Alexander—­called after both his grandfathers—­hates the idee of going to school worse ’n pisen—­ always did.  But go he shall, for I’m determined he’s got to have more larning hammered into his head yet.  I reckon you’ll have trouble with him, Master, for he’s as stupid as an owl, and as stubborn as Solomon’s mule.  But mind this, Master, I’ll back you up.  You just lick Sandy good and plenty when he needs it, and send me a scrape of the pen home with him, and I’ll give him another dose.

“There’s people that always sides in with their young ones when there’s any rumpus kicked up in the school, but I don’t hold to that, and never did.  You can depend on Rebecca Reid every time, Master.”

“Thank you.  I am sure I can,” said Eric, in his most winning tones.

He kept his face straight until it was safe to relax, and Mrs. Reid drove on with a soft feeling in her leathery old heart, which had been so toughened by long endurance of poverty and toil, and a husband who wouldn’t work and couldn’t be made to work, that it was no longer a very susceptible organ where members of the opposite sex were concerned.

Mrs. Reid reflected that this young man had a way with him.

Eric already knew most of the Lindsay folks by sight; but at the foot of the hill he met two people, a man and a boy, whom he did not know.  They were sitting in a shabby, old-fashioned wagon, and were watering their horse at the brook, which gurgled limpidly under the little plank bridge in the hollow.

Eric surveyed them with some curiosity.  They did not look in the least like the ordinary run of Lindsay people.  The boy, in particular, had a distinctly foreign appearance, in spite of the gingham shirt and homespun trousers, which seemed to be the regulation, work-a-day outfit for the Lindsay farmer lads.  He had a lithe, supple body, with sloping shoulders, and a lean, satiny brown throat above his open shirt collar.  His head was covered with thick, silky, black curls, and the hand that hung down by the side of the wagon was unusually long and