School is dismissed: the last little straggler is kicking up his heels in the snow drifts, and Master Grey and Miss Bessie are left alone. Master Grey inquires if the lesson is learned, and is told again by Miss Bessie, with a toss of her ringlets, that she has no intention of learning it. Master Grey again reminds her that the lesson must be recited before she can go home. Bessie looks mischievously at the setting sun, and plays with the master’s commands and her apron strings. An hour passes, and Bessie has not opened the book. Master Grey consults his watch, and reminds her “that it is growing dark.” Bessie smiles till the dimples play hide and seek on her cheek, but she says nothing. Another hour: Master Grey bites his lip, and, replacing his watch in his pocket, says, “I see your intention, Miss Betsey. It is quite impossible, as you know, for us to remain here after dark. To-morrow morning, if your lesson is not learned, I shall punish you in the presence of the whole school. You can go.” “Thank you, sir,” says Bessie, with mock humility, as she crushed her straw hat down over her bright ringlets. “Mischief take these women,” Master Grey was heard to utter, as he went through the snow by starlight to a cold supper. “Shall I conquer Zeb, to strike my colors to a girl of sixteen?” There was plenty to talk about over the brown bread and milk, at the farmers’ tea-tables that night; the youngsters all made up their minds that if there was “a time to play,” it was not in Master Grey’s school-room, and the old farmers said they were glad the District had a schoolmaster at last that was good for something, and that they should think better of city chaps in future for his sake. Even Zeb himself acknowledged, over his father’s forge, as he mended his broken suspenders, that Master Grey was a “trump.” The nine o’clock bell summoned again the Frog-town pupils to the District School. Master Grey in vain looked in Bessie’s face for any sign of submission. She had evidently made up her mind to brave him. After the usual preliminary exercises, she was called up to recite. Fixing her saucy black eyes upon him, she said, “I told you I would _not_ learn that lesson, and I have not learned it.” “And I told _you_,” said Master Grey, (a slight flush passing over his forehead) “that I should punish you if you did not learn it? Did I not?” Bessie’s red lip quivered, but she deigned him no reply. “You will hold out your hand, Betsey,” said Mr. Grey, taking up a large ferule that lay beside him. The color left Bessie’s cheek, but the little hand was extended with martyr-like determination, and amid a silence that might be felt, the ferule came down upon it, with justice as unflinching as if it were not owned by a woman. Betsey was not proof against this humiliation; she burst into tears, and the answering tear in Master Grey’s eye showed how difficult and repugnant had been the task.