“He's lived there all alone,” she said, solemnly, “in that big house, so long, just sitting there evening after evening all by himself, never going out, never reading anything, not even thinking; but just sitting and sitting and sitting and SITTING--Well,” she broke off, suddenly, shook the frown from her forehead, and made me the offer of a dazzling smile, “there's no use bothering one's own head about it.” “I'm glad to have a fellow-witness,” I said. “It's so eerie I might have concluded there was something the matter with ME.” “You're going to your work?” she asked, as I turned toward the gate. “I'm very glad I don't have to go to mine.” “Yours?” I inquired, rather blankly. “I teach algebra and plain geometry at the High School,” said this surprising young woman. “Thank Heaven, it's Saturday! I'm reading Les Miserables for the seventh time, and I'm going to have a real ORGY over Gervaise and the barricade this afternoon!” III I do not know why it should have astonished me to find that Miss Apperthwaite was a teacher of mathematics except that (to my inexperienced eye) she didn't look it. She looked more like Charlotte Corday! I had the pleasure of seeing her opposite me at lunch the next day (when Mr. Dowden kept me occupied with Spencerville politics, obviously from fear that I would break out again), but no stroll in the yard with her rewarded me afterward, as I dimly hoped, for she disappeared before I left the table, and I did not see her again for a fortnight. On week-days she did not return to the house for lunch, my only meal at Mrs. Apperthwaite's (I dined at a restaurant near the “Despatch” office), and she was out of town for a little visit, her mother informed us, over the following Saturday and Sunday. She was not altogether out of my thoughts, however--indeed, she almost divided them with the Honorable David Beasley. A better view which I was afforded of this gentleman did not lessen my interest in him; increased it rather; it also served to make the extraordinary didoes of which he had been the virtuoso and I the audience more than ever profoundly inexplicable. My glimpse of him in the lighted doorway had given me the vaguest impression of his appearance, but one afternoon--a few days after my interview with Miss Apperthwaite--I was starting for the office and met him full-face-on as he was turning in at his gate. I took as careful invoice of him as I could without conspicuously glaring.