with all these advantages the people of Hill's Station thought themselves centrally located, and watched with complaisant interest the passing trains, the daily hack, and the teams going along the pike? That they were pleasantly located there was no doubt. Tall beech- and sugar-maple-trees, part of the original forest, stood singly here and there and cast pleasant islands of shade upon the expanse of sunshine, and from the fields which bordered the road came the scent of clover-blooms. Elvira Hill had gone to the little country schools, sometimes to the one a mile west of town, sometimes to the one a mile east, and for the past three years had attended the Sassafrasville Academy: so that now, at seventeen, she was considered to have a good education, and expected to follow the example of many of the young people of that section and go to teaching. She talked it over with her grandmother, and decided that she had better try a subscription school in the country first; then, if she succeeded in giving satisfaction, she would apply in the winter for the position of assistant in the Hill's Station school. Her grandmother, placid and fair, with a cap of sheer white muslin resting on her yet brown hair, and a pair of gold-bowed spectacles pushed up on her forehead above her kindly blue eyes, was considered a handsome old woman, and showed few traces of the life of toil through which she had passed. She read a great deal in a New Testament with large print, and often sat a long time in thought, with it open on her knees. Another work which she frequently perused was Mrs. Ellet's "Women of the Revolution," in two volumes, containing steel engravings of stately dames in laced bodices and powdered hair. Elvira borrowed a horse of one of the neighbors, put her grandmother's much-worn red plush side saddle upon it, and started out in search of a school. She rode east and she rode north; but in the first district they had a teacher already engaged, and in the second they had concluded they wouldn't have any school that summer. Did they know of any other school where a teacher was wanted? she inquired. No, they couldn't say they did; but she might hear of one by inquiring further, the honest district trustees said. So she rode homeward again, in no wise discouraged, and asked the postmaster to inquire of the farmers who came in from other neighborhoods in regard to this matter. He promised that he would, and a week later called her in as she was passing, and said, "There was a man here yesterday from Buck Creek district who said they wanted a teacher in their school this summer. You might try there. His name is Sapp, and he lives right by the school-house. You go two miles and a half south till you come to a mud road, then two miles and a half east till you come to a pike. You can't miss the place."