"Hush!" said Janice. "There is somebody standing at the side gate, listening. You see, sir, everybody doesn't have the same opinion of poor Mr. Drugg's music----" "My goodness!" ejaculated Nelson, under his breath. "It's Miss Scattergood, I do believe!" The timid little spinster could not escape. They had come upon her so quietly. "Oh! is it you, Janice dear?" she said, in a startled voice. "And Mr. Haley. We are walking home from the Hammetts' sugaring." "Well! I'm glad it ain't anybody else," said Miss 'Rill frankly. "But I _do_ run around here sometimes of an evening, when mother's busy or asleep, just to listen to that old song. Mr. Drugg plays it with so much feelin'--don't you think so, Mr. Haley? And then--I was always very fond of that song." They left her at the corner of High Street, and the flurried little woman hurried home. "I do believe there is a romance there," whispered the teacher, when Miss 'Rill was out of earshot. "So there is. Didn't you know that--years and years ago--she and Mr. Drugg were engaged?" cried Janice. "Why, yes, they were. But why they did not marry, and why he married the girl he did, and why Miss 'Rill kept on teaching school and never would look at any other man, is all a mystery." "Romance!" commented Nelson, with a little laugh, yet looking down upon Janice with serious eyes. "The night is full of it--don't you think so, Janice?" "No, no!" she laughed up at him. "It's only the moonlight," and a little later he left her at the old Day house with a casual handshake. CHAPTER XXIV THE SCHOOL DEDICATION Thereafter there was a somewhat different tone to the friendship between Janice and the school-teacher. They were confidential. They both assumed that the other was interested in the matters dear to each. It was a comradery that had no silly side to it. Nelson Haley was a young man working his way up the first rungs of the ladder of life; Janice was his good friend and staunch partisan. As neither was possessed of brother or sister, they adopted each other in that stead. The winter fled away at last and Spring came over the mountain range and down to the lakeside, scattering flowers and grasses as she passed. Although Janice had enjoyed some of the fun and frolic of the New England winter, she was perfectly delighted to see the season change. It had been late spring when she reached Poketown the year before. Now she saw the season open, and her first trips over the hillsides and through the wood lot where the snow still lay in sheltered places, searching for the earliest flowers, were days of delight for the girl. The Shower Bath was released from its icy fetters, and the little mountain stream poured over the lip of granite with a burst of sound like laughter. She visited The Overlook, too; but she did not need to view the landscape o'er to enable her to understand why God did not immediately answer her prayers for her father. Great news from the mine in Mexico: