Miss Wilde had taught, at first, in the school of a large town where there were plenty of pictures and maps on the walls, and charts of different kinds and reference books for the children to use, and where people who loved children would often drop in and tell them about birds and flowers or their journeys to interesting places. She had taken the country school because the doctor thought it would be better for her health, and oh, how she wished that she could have brought some of the pictures and books with her, or that some of the summer boarders who stayed until almost winter would come in and talk to her pupils. She told the children stories or read to them on Friday afternoons. She also knew that there were some travelling libraries of books that she might borrow that the children could have themselves, but reading is a habit; the children needed to be interested first. So it came about that, when the second year of her school life on the hillside began, Miss Wilde felt rather discouraged. On this particular rainy Friday she was feeling worried about her mother, who boarded at the Centre Village and with whom she spent every week-end, going down with the mail-carrier on his return trip Friday evening and usually walking back on Sunday afternoon if no one chanced to be driving that way. Mrs. Wilde had been ill the Sunday before and Miss Wilde had not heard a word all the week. Everything had gone awry that morning, and when the last child had filed out for the dinner-hour and gone splish-splashing up the muddy road, before straightening out the room as usual, Miss Wilde sat down at the desk, her head in her hands, and two big tears splashed down on the inky blotting-paper before her. Presently she wiped her eyes, opened all the windows that the rain did not enter, took her box of luncheon from her desk, and walked slowly down the side aisle to the little porch, which also acted as the cloak-room, the place where she usually ate her luncheon when it was too cool or wet to go outdoors. As she passed Tommy Todd’s desk she thought she heard a noise, and glanced sideways, half expecting to see him crouching under it, bent upon some prank. No one was there, and still there was a scratching sound in that vicinity. Opening the desk lid, Miss Wilde gave a scream, for inside was the new trap and inside the trap two wicked-looking old rats whose whiskers had evidently grown gray with experience.