again. The snow'll be all over them stuffed animals within an hour! And it don't seem's if I'd been out o' my boots fifteen minutes.

As he drew one foot reluctantly from the chair, Reuben stopped him.

"Sit still," he bade him. "You give me the keys, and I'll go put the window down. It won't take five minutes, and I'll leave the keys on my way back."

Miller demurred, but Reuben insisted, found a lantern and was off. He was surprised to find how heavy the snow was already, falling thick and straight and steadily with scarcely enough wind to mark the point from which it came. He enjoyed walking through it, and going into the academy at night was a new experience. The big room looked quite different, with only the faint light of the lantern blinking through the shadows. He lingered after he had shut the window, sitting down in his own seat, then mounting the platform and taking the master's chair at the desk, images crowding his mind dating from the day of his entrance.

How very young the boy of that first day seemed to him now. He had sat in the back seat in the farther corner, and Rusty, after one day in the seat opposite, in the front seat of the next row. How angry she had been to be moved down under the master's eye. But how quickly she had gotten over

it and seen it as a joke. And how very young she was! On a sudden her image came to him as she had been on that first day-almost as much a stranger to him as to the others, for she had only arrived at Miss Penny's the night before. As he saw her again in the ugly plaid dress with the startlingly red hair and freckles, he drew a long breath. He could scarcely believe it. And to-day she was the prettiest girl in school.

Reaching this conclusion, Reuben rose suddenly from the master's desk, bounded from the platform, and, seizing the lantern, hurried down-stairs and out into the storm. When he reached the Millers' he found Rusty's mother worrying because she hadn't taken an umbrella. So he took one from there, got another from Miss Penny's for Anna, and went back to the Hatches' with them. He went round to the back door this time and again avoided any urging to come in.

Next morning, the snow was deep over everything and still fell steadily. Reuben happened to be passing the Millers' gate just as Rusty came out, so she couldn't do otherwise than walk along under his umbrella, which he raised as he saw her.

They spoke of the party in a perfunctory way. "What a pretty new dress Anna had," Reuben remarked innocently. "I don't think I ever saw

such a lovely color before anywhere except in the sky."

He spoke enthusiastically. Absolutely unaware that the material of the gown was that which he had himself taken back to the shop, when he had seen it the night before upon Anna's return from the party, even as he had admired it, he had realized that it was prettier than anything Rusty had ever had. And as nothing occurred at the Millers' without Rusty's sanction, he felt that the gown was another mark of her generosity. Two new ones couldn't have been afforded, so she had worn her old one that Anna might have the new.

He spoke warmly in his desire to express his appreciation. For after all, despise him as she might, there was still enough kindness between Rusty and himself to allow him to go as far as that.

"I'm glad you like it, I'm sure," returned Rusty frigidly, the moment she could speak at all. “I wonder you didn't come to the party to see how it outshone everything else."

Reuben, too, hesitated before he replied. Rusty had been cold and reserved all the year, but she had never spoken in that tone before-as if she couldn't endure even to speak to him. His reply was hardly an answer.

"I shall be pretty much out of it at school today, anyhow," he remarked, "for no one will want