At the end of the second week she received a letter from her brother. It was the first he had ever written her, for they had never been separated before. Talitha puzzled over its pages, growing more and more bewildered at their contents: “Si Quinn wrote me about the schoolhouse. Isn’t it great! Jake always was heady, he could work up that temper of his until he was worse than a hornet. I hope this’ll be a lesson he’ll remember. I’m just as proud of you as I can be. Everything has worked out for the best after all, hasn’t it? Gincy is studying like a whale. She was mightily disturbed when she heard you’d gone home on her account and I had all I could do to keep her from tagging along after you. But Gincy has a heap of good sense. She’s Miss Howard’s right hand man; I don’t get a sight of her except at meal times, but I can hear her voice on the high notes ’way above the rest come Harmonia nights.—Oh, Gincy’s making good, all right, and I’m glad as can be, but I do miss you awfully, sis—” Talitha finished and then her eyes wandered back toward the beginning. “I don’t understand it one bit,” she thought. “Mart doesn’t seem to care at all that the schoolhouse burned. He writes as though it were almost a joke.” The tears rushed to Talitha’s eyes. “I’m going right over to the schoolmaster’s, maybe he can explain it,” she decided at last. “I do wonder what he wrote Martin.” The girl snatched up her sunbonnet and hurried out of the door, the letter in her hand. Half-way to the old man’s cabin she met him hobbling cheerfully along by the aid of his crutch. The satisfied smile on his face brought Talitha’s grievance freshly to mind; she almost resented his unusually jovial greeting. “Halloo, thar, Tally; you shore air lookin’ robustious—” “Good-morning,” responded Talitha coldly. “I’ve just got a letter from Martin, and—and I’ve been wondering what you told him. He writes as though it wasn’t—well, he almost joked about the schoolhouse being burned.” The girl’s lips quivered. “Law, now, did he?” considered the old man, evading the look of reproach in Talitha’s eyes. “I didn’t go fer to give him any sech idee. Hit war a powerful mean thing fer Jake Simcox ter do, and I aimed ter lay thet out plain ter Mart. S’pose you jest walk along with me ter the ruins. I thought a sight of thet old shack; hit’s whar I spent cornsiderable many years. I like ter think of you-all a set-tin’ on them benches. You war a powerful bouncin’ leetle gal, Tally, and I war an ill enough teacher, but I done the best I knowed then.” Talitha’s anger had suddenly vanished. There was something pitiful in the schoolmaster’s fondness for recalling the past. After all, he felt the loss of the old place more deeply than he would have people think. “You mustn’t say that,” she insisted. “Of course you did the best you could, but I know just how you feel; I wish I’d done more when I had the chance.”