The young teacher was gathering her courage to meet the conditions to which she had been accustomed all her life; suddenly they appalled her. How could she make that bare and desolate place cheerful and inviting to her pupils? Early that Monday morning, long before the time for her scholars to arrive, she started for the schoolhouse. Halfway up the slope she paused to consider it—a small log cabin set in the midst of blackberry vines and tall, brown weeds which reached to the eaves. A narrow, worn path led through the tangle to the low, front door. Talitha hurried on breathlessly and opened it. The shutter over the one glassless window at the rear was also thrown back to let a draught of fresh air through the damp, musty place. In one corner was a rusty sheet-iron stove, near it a number of plank benches without backs; while on the opposite side a rude desk and a single chair completed the furnishings. There were no blackboards, no maps. The walls were as bare and uninteresting as when Si Quinn sat in the seat of authority and ruled his little flock—she the most timid and shrinking of them all—with a rod of iron. She sat for a long time thinking until a certain project entered her mind. It was something to be carefully considered. She sprang up and filled a tin can with water for the flowers and reddening vines she had gathered on the way, and placed it on her desk. Next, a large picture calendar was pinned to the wall and several pictures from a newspaper supplement—a part of her possessions acquired at Bentville. A stream of sunlight through the open window lighted the gay colours on walls and desk. The children hovered about the door in amazement until they were bidden to enter. They were all small but Billy Gooch, the eldest, who was short and stocky for his fourteen years and quite prepared to be his young teacher’s most zealous champion. The feeling of timidity with which Talitha began her duties vanished before the morning was over; and in its place was a great anxiety to help her pupils and make more attractive the cheerless place which only a wide stretch of the imagination could call a schoolhouse. The latter seemed an impossibility, but when she reached the creek path that night on her way home, she found Dan Gooch waiting for her, eager for the earliest news of the day’s proceedings. To this sympathetic listener she told her needs and plans. He heard her to the end with a silent gravity which gave little sign of encouragement, but at dawn the next morning, Dan was in the saddle wending his way to the Settlement store. The flitch of bacon in his saddlebag had been secretly purloined from the family’s scanty store to be bartered for a few lengths of sawed timber and a small quantity of black paint. Dan correctly surmising that the storekeeper, being a patron of the school, would add his own contribution in the way of generous measure beside the nails and loan of a hammer.