He was so engrossed that he had not noticed the school-children who had come up noiselessly from behind and were looking in wonder at his drawings. Presently a child, who in her eagerness had touched his shoulder, broke the stillness in apology. "Say, Mister, there's a lady comes to school every day. She's a painter too, and drawed Sissy Mathers." Oliver glanced at the speaker and the group about her; wished them all good-morning and squeezed a fresh tube on his palette. He was too much absorbed in his work for prolonged talk. The child, emboldened by his cheery greeting, began again, the others crowding closer. "She drawed the bridge too, and me and Jennie Waters was sitting on the rail--she's awful nice." Oliver looked up, smiling. "What's her name?" "I don't know. Teacher calls her Miss Margaret, but there's more to it. She comes every year." Oliver bent over his easel, drew out a line brush from the sheaf in his hand, caught up a bit of yellow ochre from his palette and touched up the shadow of the birch. "All the women painters must be Margarets," he said to himself. Then he fell to wondering what had become of her since the school closed. He had always felt uncomfortable over the night when he had defended "the red-headed girl in blue gingham," as she was called by the students. She had placed him in the wrong by misunderstanding his reasons for serving her. The students had always looked upon him after that as a quarrelsome person, when he was only trying to protect a woman from insult. He could not find it in his heart to blame her, but he wished that it had not happened. As these thoughts filled his mind he became so absorbed that the children's good-by failed to reach his ear. That day Hank had brought him his luncheon--two ears of hot corn in a tin bucket, four doughnuts and an apple--the corn in the bottom of the bucket and the doughnuts and apple on top. He could have walked home for his midday meal, for he was within sound of Samanthy's dinner-horn, but he liked it better this way. Leaving his easel standing in the road, he had waved his hand in good-by to Hank, picked up the bucket and had crept under the shadow of the bridge to eat his luncheon. He had finished the corn, thrown the cobs to the fish, and was beginning on the doughnuts, when a step on the planking above him caused him to look up. A girl in a tam-o'-shanter cap was leaning over the rail. The sun was behind her, throwing her face into shadow--so blinding a light that Oliver only caught the nimbus of fluffy hair that framed the dark spot of her head. Then came a voice that sent a thrill of surprise through him. "Why, Mr. Horn! Who would have thought of meeting you here?" Oliver was on his feet in an instant--a half-eaten doughnut in one hand, his slouch hat in the other. With this he was shading his eyes against the glare of the sun. He was still ignorant of who had spoken to him.