Happily, at this moment came presiding elder Magruder to a quarterly meeting on the circuit to which Ilissawachee belonged, and, hearing of Patty's case, he proposed to get her employment as a teacher. He had heard that a teacher was wanted in the neighborhood of the Hickory Ridge church, where the conference had met. So Patty was settled as a teacher. For ten hours a day she showed children how to "do sums," heard their lessons in Lindley Murray, listened to them droning through the moralizing poems in the "Didactic" department of the old English Reader, and taught them spelling from the "a-b abs" to "in-com-pre-hen-si-bil-i-ty" and its octopedal companions. And she boarded round, but Dr. Morgan, the Presbyterian ex-minister, when he learned that she was Kike's cousin, and a sufferer for her religion, insisted that her Sundays should be passed in his house. And being almost as much a pastor as a doctor among the people, he soon found Patty a rare helper in his labors among the poor and the sick. Something of good-breeding and refinement there was in her manner that made her seem a being above the poor North Carolinans who had moved into the hollows, and her kindness was all the more grateful on account of her dignity. She was "a grand lady," they declared, and besides was "a kinder sorter angel, like, ye know, in her way of tendin' folks what's sick." They loved to tell how "she nussed Bill Turner's wife through the awfulest spell of the yaller janders you ever seed; an' toted _Miss_ Cole's baby roun' all night the night her ole man was fotch home shot through the arm with his own good-fer-nothin' keerlessness. She's better'n forty doctors, root or calomile." [Illustration: THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS OF HICKORY RIDGE.] One day Doctor Morgan called at the school-house door just as the long spelling-class had broken up, and Patty was getting ready to send the children home. The doctor sat on his horse while each of the boys, with hat in one hand and dinner-basket in the other, walked to the door, and, after the fashion of those good old days, turned round and bowed awkwardly at the teacher. Some bobbed their heads forward on their breasts; some jerked them sidewise; some, more respectful, bent their bodies into crescents. Each seemed alike glad when he was through with this abominable bit of ceremony, the only bit of ceremony in the whole round of their lives. The girls, in short linsey dresses, with copperas-dyed cotton pantalettes, came after, dropping "curcheys" in a style that would have bewildered a dancing-master. "Miss Lumsden," said the doctor, when the teacher appeared, "I am sorry to see you so tired. I want you to go home with me. I have some work for you to do to-morrow."