OLDHAM; OR, BESIDE ALL WATERS.

CHAPTER I.

THE RED SCHOOLHOUSE.

I was not in the least like the red schoolhouses one may see every day in the city. They are great piles of brick, usually all the uglier for the attempts at ornament bestowed upon them. They have any number of rooms for any number of grades, with A classes and B classes, and all the other machinery for grinding out scholars by the hundred, all done to one pattern. My red schoolhouse was more like the little "custom mill," built by the side of a dashing, flashing mill-stream, with trees growing about it, and a row of sheds where stand steady, sober old horses, patiently waiting while their owners sit inside, or about the mill-door, discussing politics and neighborhood news, and waiting in their turn for their separate "grists" of sweet-smelling meal and flour. There was just such a mill not far from the red schoolhouse; and the hum of the machinery could

be heard in the schoolroom when the boys and girls were particularly quiet, as was the case on the special occasion when my story begins.

There had been a talk two or three times, in school-meeting, of re-furnishing the schoolhouse on modern principles; but it had never been carried out. A long desk ran around two sides of the room, with a bench before it, where the elder scholars sat; in front of this bench was another, mostly used for recitations; and before all, a still lower seat for the little ones who were just learning their letters. The rest of the furniture consisted of the teacher's desk and chair, standing on a platform by themselves; a good serviceable blackboard, a little the worse for wear; and a map of the world, and another of the United States, which was so many States behind the times that it must needs be an old inhabitant.

There were not more than twenty scholars present that June afternoon; and those were mostly girls or very little boys, for the big boys of the district were busy with another branch of their education, — helping their fathers on the farm. All the children were seated with their faces toward the teacher, and the room was so still that the hum of the mill sounded like the drone of a big bumble-bee. Miss Armstrong was standing on the platform, her hand resting upon a book which she had apparently just laid down. She could not be called a very pretty woman, and yet there was that in her face and manner which made one look at her again. She had a certain air of peace and cheerfulness overlying steadiness and resolution, what you would call a face to

be trusted. "She looks as if she had come through the wars, and beat," said Patience Fletcher, who, poor thing, had been beaten many times in her warfare.

"Now, let me hear you say that verse all together," said Miss Armstrong; "and then we will join in repeating the Lord's Prayer. I hope I shall hear every voice. Stand up, if you please."

Every voice was heard as the children repeated, in tones that were reverent from feeling, "Like as a father pitieth his own children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." All the children joined in the repetition of the Lord's Prayer, with one exception. A thin, dark little girl, with black, crispy hair, stood looking down at her closely clasped hands with a curious movement about her lips. You would say she had much ado not to burst out crying. As the school was dismissed, and this little girl made her courtesy at the door (for this school was so far behind the times that " manners were still taught therein), she suddenly raised her eyes, and looked her teacher in the face. Those eyes of Kit's were always a kind of surprise. They were dark violet-blue, with black level brows, and very long black lashes, Irish blue eyes, and had an extraordinary brilliancy about them, like precious stones or sunlit water. They now flashed upon Miss Armstrong with a look of love and thankfulness which went to the teacher's heart.

"She has taken in something, at any rate," thought Miss Armstrong. "I must talk more with her. I wonder why she did not join in the prayer."

Somebody else wondered also; for, the moment she was outside the door, Kit was met with the sharp question,

"Kit Mallory, why didn't you say the Lord's Prayer?"

"I don't know it," replied Kit, coloring up to the roots of her hair; and then, after a moment, she added, as if with an effort, "Our folks don't believe in such things.'

"You wicked girl!" exclaimed the first speaker, a pretty well grown girl of sixteen, very neatly dressed. "You wicked child, not to believe in the Lord's Prayer!"

"I didn't say I didn't believe in it: I said I didn't know it," replied Kit with some spirit. "How can I believe in what I don't know any thing about?"

"Well, you ought to know it, then," said Selina. "You could have learned it if you had chosen, I know."

Kit did not seem disposed to pursue the subject. She walked a little way down the road, climbed the bars, and was soon ascending the rocky hill-pasture.

"I declare, I don't think that girl ought to be allowed to come to school," said Selina. “Phin Mallory is a regular infidel, and Melissa makes all kinds of fun of religion. Kit isn't Phin's niece, either, though she calls him uncle. She is only a little foundling taken out of the poorhouse; Melissa told me so herself."

"If she had been out of the orphan-asylum, it would have been all right, I suppose," said a girl who had not yet spoken. It was now Selina's turn

to color. Her eyes flashed, and she turned absolutely white with anger.

"For shame, Sarah!" said Faith Fletcher.

isn't Selina's fault."

"Nor Kit's either."

"It

"Oh, don't trouble yourself to take my part, Faith," said Selina in a voice which trembled with anger. "If Sarah” But here she stopped; and,

tying on her bonnet, she walked rapidly away in a direction opposite to that which Kit had taken.

"You are too bad, Sarah," said Faith. "Now she will go home and cry half the night."

"Why am I too bad, any more than she?" asked Sarah. "What did she say about Kit?"

"Two wrongs don't make a right," said Faith, very truly.

"And as to her crying, what is there to cry about?" continued Sarah. "I think she might be thankful that she has a good home. Nobody would ever think of her being an adopted child if she did not put on such airs. I must say I do like to take her down." "And how do you like it when somebody takes you down?" asked Faith.

"When it happens, I will tell you," said Sarah lightly. "Where is that child? - Come, Gerty. You can't stay to play to-night : I promised to come home early, and help mother."

"And I must go home and help sister," said Faith, with a little sigh, as if the prospect were not the most alluring in the world. "Come, children. Eddy, see how you have mussed up your clean apron; and Eben has got his knees all green on the grass. What do