Yet my former pupils lamented so openly and said so much at home, that their small voices wrought a change of opinion, and at the beginning of the second year the school was given to me again. The teacher who had taken my place said a little spitefully, on leaving, that I had spoiled the school for any one else. She was a very worthy young lady, but one of those who scream at the sight of a spider, a mouse or a harmless snake. Blackamoor came to school one morning in July, head downward, in the hands of one of my larger boys, named Wiggan Brown, who was a little inclined to thoughtless cruelty. On the part of children, indeed, cruelty is usually thoughtless. They are rarely cruel after they have been taught to think on the subject. Wiggan and his older brother had taken Blackamoor from a nest in the top of a hemlock-tree. By this time the reader will have guessed that Blackamoor was the young crow which became one of our schoolhouse pets. At first we built a pen for him at the farther corner of the schoolyard, where we kept him until he could fly. After that he was released, to stay with us or depart. He chose to stay, and during school hours usually sat on the ridge of the schoolhouse roof. At night he often accompanied me home, and lingered about the farmhouse or barns till school-time the next day. At the recesses he swaggered and hopped about with the children at play, often cawing uproariously. If a dog or cat approached during school hours, Blackamoor would cry, _"Har-r-r!"_ from the roof, and drive the intruder away. If it was a person, he cried _"Haw!"_ quite sharply, on a different key. If another crow or large bird flew past, he turned up an eye and said _"Hawh!"_ rather low. In fact, he kept us posted on all that was going on out-of-doors, for we soon came to know most of his signal-cries. The boys would glance up from their books and smile when they heard him. Blackamoor had certain highly reprehensible traits. He was thievish, and we were obliged to keep an eye on him, or he would steal all our lead-pencils, pocket-handkerchiefs and other small objects. What he took he secreted, and was marvelously cunning in doing it. He fell finally into a difficulty with a gang of Italian laborers who were excavating for a new railroad line that passed within a quarter of a mile of the schoolhouse. There were fifty-five of these Italians, and they had their camp in a grove of pines within plain sight of us. My pupils were afraid of these swarthy men, for they jabbered fiercely in an unknown tongue, and each one was armed with a sheath-knife. On the whole, I thought it better that my boys should not go to their camp. But Blackamoor went there, and indeed became a constant visitor. There were probably titbits to be secured about their cooking-fires. For a time he nearly deserted the schoolhouse for the Italian camp in the pines, or at least was flying back and forth a great deal, "hawing" and "harring."