The girl tossed her chin and was silent, with a warm blush on her cheek and a lurking imp of laughter in her eye. The schoolmaster frowned still more darkly. "Shameless as well as ignorant!" he repeated, bringing the ferule of his umbrella smartly down upon the macadam; "and you, Jane Hewitt, and you, Lizzie Polkinghorne!" "Why, what's the matter?" I asked, stepping out into the road. At sight of me the girls broke into a peal of laughter, gathered up their skirts and fled, still laughing, down the road. "What's the matter?" I asked again. "The matter?" echoed the schoolmaster, staring blankly after the retreating skirts; then more angrily--"The matter? come and look here!" He took hold of my shirt-sleeve and led me to the well. Stooping, I saw half-a-dozen pins gleaming in its brown depths. "A love-charm." The schoolmaster nodded. "Thomasine Slade has been wishing for a husband. I see no sin in that. When she looked up and saw you coming down the lane--" I paused. The schoolmaster said nothing. He was leaning over the well, gloomily examining the pins. "--your aspect was enough to scare anyone," I wound up lamely. "I wish," the schoolmaster hastily began, "I wish to Heaven I had the gift of humour! I lose my temper and grow positive. I'd kill these stupid superstitions with ridicule, if I had the gift. It's a great gift. My God, I do hate to be laughed at!" "Even by a fool?" I asked, somewhat astonished at his heat. "Certainly. There's no comfort in comparing the laugh of fools with the crackling of thorns under a pot, if you happen to be inside the pot and in process of cooking." He took off his hat, brushed it on the sleeve of his coat, and resumed in a tone altogether lighter-- "Yes, I hate to be laughed at; and I'll tell you a tale on this point that may amuse you at my expense. "I am London-bred, as you know, and still a Cockney in the grain, though when I came down here to teach school I was just nineteen and now I'm over forty. It was during the summer holidays that I first set foot in this neighbourhood--a week before school re-opened. I came early, to look for lodgings and find out a little about the people and settle down a bit before beginning work. "The vicar--the late vicar, I mean--commended me to old Retallack, who used to farm Rosemellin, up the valley, a widower and childless. His sister, Miss Jane Ann, kept house for him, and these were the only two souls on the premises till I came and was boarded by them for thirteen shillings a week. For that price they gave me a bedroom, a fair-sized sitting-room and as much as I could eat.