"We are not to think of that," said Grandma Eaton, speaking so decidedly that a flush overspread her thin, worn face. "The coin belongs to the gentleman who just dropped it; and I do not doubt that a way will be opened for it to be returned to its owner. Those who seek to do right seldom lack opportunity. Cinderella's horses and carriage pass this way too seldom to escape notice, and probably some of our neighbors will be able to tell us to whom they belong." But all the men in the quiet, out-of-the-way neighborhood had been at town-meeting that afternoon, and none of the women folk, excepting Grandma Eaton and little Ella, had seen the fine sight. They would have remembered it almost as the figment of a dream, had it not been for the bright ten-dollar gold piece laid away in cotton in Grandma Eaton's best china tea-pot, on the top shelf of the parlor cupboard. On the very next Monday morning after this episode, that same glossy-haired, blue-eyed Ella, with grandma's thin shawl pinned about her shoulders, made one of a bevy of girls who, with arms full of books, slates, and lunch-baskets, were drawing near a plain little brown school-house, standing in the shade of a tall, plumy pine-tree on a sandy hillside that was supposed to be exactly in the center of the Pine Meadow school-district. "Oh, there's a fire in the school-house!" cried Lizzie Barber; "and I'm glad, for my fingers are cold. I was in such a hurry I forgot my mittens." "We don't often find a fire made on the first day of school," said Abby Wood, "because the committee-man has to go for the teacher." "He must have kindled it before he started away," said Ella, "because it has been burning some time. I can tell by the thinness of the smoke." "That is just like you, Ella Eaton," put in Angelina Brown. "You're always pretending to know things by what you see that no one else would ever think about. Can't you be obliging enough to look through the walls and tell us who is there? Perhaps school has begun." "I have no way of telling that," laughed Ella, good-naturedly; "but, no doubt some of the boys are there to make first choice of the seats." "The boys must have climbed in at one of the windows," whispered Ella. "Let us serenade them to let them know we are here." And she began one of their familiar school songs in a clear, ringing voice, her companions at once joining in with the melody. By this time they had crossed the waste of sand, and were at the school-house door; but, on trying to enter, they were surprised to find the stout hasp and padlock as secure as it had been through all the long vacation.