“Skully Simms ain’t got no pa; he ain’t got no ma. He lives with his uncle and makes out the best he can. He’s pretty much alone, and it ain’t natural for children to be alone. All the rest of you can go to homes where there is folks waiting for you. But this boy has just his uncle. That ain’t much like having your ma and your brothers and sisters and your pa watching out to see you coming home and speeding you on your way. He’s been wanting to come up here to school ever since it opened. He _has_ come up here and peered in the windows, and honed to come in. But he didn’t durst. Why? Because some of his folks, that perhaps he never so much as laid eyes on, took a dislike to some of Coulter’s folks, that Coulter never knew. Do you wonder it made me laugh and mock?” He played on, happily. The tune took dancing feet to itself and set the hearts if not the feet of the children, to a gay rhythm. Once he lifted the bow. “Do you wonder?” he thundered at them in the pause. Then he went on with the merry tune. And now, indeed, the feet of the children began to keep time. “Say, Coulter,” he cried as if he were calling out the numbers of a dance, “will you cut it out?” Coulter, never a hangdog, sat with his arms still folded. His blue eyes met the old fiddler’s steadily. “Coulter, you’ve got brains. You’re not a dolt. You see the point of what I told you. Cut it out, Coulter, will you, for the sake of these here young ladies, and for my sake, and for the sake of learning, Coulter!” How happy the music was—how far away from hate and meanness and grudging! Coulter looked squarely across at poor little Simms, who seemed very small and thin. His spare arms showed through his torn shirt; his wisp of a face was marred and blackened by Coulter’s fist. Suddenly, Bud Coulter saw the point. Yes, “l’arnin’” was a thing that had neither to do with friend or foe. “Cut it out, Coulter?” questioned Haystack, vociferously. “Yessir,” called back Coulter. “If he wants to come to school, I’ll keep my hands off him.” “Honor bright?” “Yessir. When I give my word, I keep it.” “Glory be!” shouted Haystack. And “Glory be!” shouted “Betsy,” the violin. “School over?” queried Haystack. Azalea nodded. “School’s over,” announced the fiddler. “And this is where we march.”