The fashionable people from Lexington who visited at "Oaklands," the home of the Gilcrests, wondered that Major Gilcrest sent his only daughter to this backwoods school, and his wife sometimes urged that Betsy be sent to some finishing-school in Virginia, or at least to the fashionable female seminary at Lexington, or to the lately opened young ladies' college at Bourbonton. Probably, had Betsy seconded the hints of these friends and the rather languid suggestions of her mother, this might have been done; but this independent child of nature loved her home and the humble little schoolhouse by the spring; and her father, whether at the pleading of his daughter, or because of his ingrained dislike of any suggestions from outsiders, continued to send her to the little neighborhood school. In so doing he was building better than he knew; for humble as was the Cane Ridge school, there was in it an atmosphere of happiness and refinement more real than could be found amid the superficial culture, genteel primness and underlying selfishness of most of the fashionable female seminaries of that day. The young Virginian schoolmaster was teaching these boys and girls far better things than could be found in any text-books--independence of thought, reverence for learning, and love of purity and truth; and it was lessons such as these that made these Bourbon County boys and girls reverence their master and love their backwoods school. CHAPTER V. "SETTIN' TILL BEDTIME" One night in November the Rogers household had gathered as usual around the hearth in the spacious living-room. The fire roared and crackled merrily, dancing on the whitewashed walls, and shining brightly on the brass andirons and the glass doors of the cupboard. The candle-stand stood in the center of the room; on one side of it sat Abner Dudley, reading aloud from the "Kentucky Gazette"; on the other, Mrs. Rogers, seated in the cushioned rocker, was patching a linsey jacket for Tommy, who, with his youngest brother, was playing jackstones on the floor behind the stand. To supplement the light from candle and fire, a huge hickory knot had been thrust into the fireplace, against one of the andirons. By its light Henry was weaving a basket, the floor around him littered with the long, pliable osier slips which the twins were sorting for his use. In the opposite corner, on a low stool, the negro girl, Rache, nodded over a piece of knitting. Mason Rogers, enjoying his after-supper pipe, was engaged in mending a set of harness. Susan, dreamily staring into the fire, held her sewing idly in her lap until her mother's voice aroused her.