"Then you may tell Miss McPherson that you won't have anything of the sort!" said Miss Priscilla, rousing herself and speaking with a sharpness and suddenness which made Calista start. "You have had books enough already. Always something to extort money. I won't let you go to school another day. You shall stay at home and work for a living, and save me the expense of a servant, instead of going to school all day and then coming home and sitting for an hour with your hands before you doing nothing. I say you shall not go to school another day." "Very well, aunt," replied Calista, coolly. She had heard the threat too often to be alarmed at it. "Nonsense!" said Miss Druett, in her trenchant way. "Get the backgammon board, Calista, and tell Chloe to bring candles." Calista did so, and then betook herself to her own room. It was anything but a sumptuous apartment. There had once been a handsome paper on the walls, but it was stained with damp and hanging loose in some places. The pieces of carpet by the bedside and before the glass were trodden into shreds despite Calista's mending, and the bed covering was old and faded. Forlorn as the room was, it was Calista's only place of refuge, and she had done her best to make it look pleasant. The floor was clean and the old furniture well dusted. Calista's few books were neatly disposed on the mantlepiece. The window, which looked to the east, was open, and a full flood of yellow moonlight poured in at it. A mocking-bird was singing in the pine trees which bordered one side of the old graveyard, and frogs and beetles piped a not unmelodious chorus. Calista drew a chair into the deep window recess and sat down, leaning her arm on the sill. "How lovely it all is!" said she to herself. "If Judge Settson or even Aunt Hannah had this place, what a paradise they would make of it! As for Aunt Priscilla, she might as well be in the poor-house as here for all the comfort she takes or lets any one else take. I wonder if it really is religion that makes the difference. To be sure there is Antoinette Diaments—she pretends to be a Christian, and she is as mean as Aunt Priscilla in a different way. But, then, she is only one. "I verily believe it is as Mary says, that it is not money that spoils people, but the love of it. If I thought it would make me like Aunt Priscilla, I am sure I would never think of being rich again. Oh dear, how hungry I am!" And then Calista bethought herself of Sally's basket of ginger-nuts, and, taking them from their concealment, she made a hearty supper. The spicy gingerbread made her thirsty, and taking her cracked jug she went down to the well for some water. As she was drinking from the bucket, she saw that her handkerchief had fallen from the window. As she went to pick it up, she heard Miss Druett say inside,—