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Nevertheless, when Twing, a week or two later, suggested that he might sing the same song as a solo at a certain performance to be given by the school children in aid of a local charity, she drily intimated that it was hardly of a character to suit the entertainment. “But,” she added, more gently, “you recite so well; why not give a recitation?”

He looked at her with questioning and troubled eyes,–the one expression he seemed to have lately acquired. “But that would be IN PUBLIC! There’ll be a lot of people there,” he said doubtfully.

A little amused at this first apparent sign of a want of confidence in himself, she said, with a reassuring smile, “So much the better,–you do it really too well to have it thrown away entirely on children.”

“Do YOU wish it?” he said suddenly.

Somewhat confused, but more irritated by his abruptness, she replied, “Why not?” But when the day came, and before a crowded audience, in which there was a fair sprinkling of strangers, she regretted her rash suggestion. For when the pupils had gone through certain calisthenic exercises–admirably taught and arranged by him–and “spoken their pieces,” he arose, and, fixing his eyes on her, began Othello’s defense before the Duke and Council. Here, as on the previous occasion, she felt herself personally alluded to in his account of his wooing. Desdemona, for some occult reason, vicariously appeared for her in the unwarrantable picture of his passion, and to this was added the absurd consciousness which she could not put aside that the audience, following with enthusiasm his really strong declamation, was also following his suggestion and adopting it. Yet she was also conscious, and, as she thought, as inconsistently, of being pleased and even proud of his success. At the conclusion the applause was general, and a voice added with husky admiration and familiarity:–

“Brayvo, Johnny Walker!”

Twing’s face became suddenly white as a Pierrot mask. There was a dead silence, in which the voice continued, “Give us ‘Sugar in the Gourd,’ Johnny.”

A few hisses, and cries of “Hush!” “Put him out!” followed. Mrs. Martin raised her eyes quickly to where her assistant had stood bowing his thanks a moment before. He was gone!

More concerned than she cared to confess, vaguely fearful that she was in some way connected with his abrupt withdrawal, and perhaps a little remorseful that she had allowed her personal feelings to interfere with her frank recognition of his triumph, she turned back to the schoolroom, after the little performers and their audience had departed, in the hope that he might return. It was getting late, the nearly level rays of the sun were lying on the empty benches at the lower end of the room, but the desk where she sat with its lid raised was in deep shadow. Suddenly she heard his voice in a rear hall, but it was accompanied by another’s,–the same voice which had interrupted the applause. Before she could either withdraw, or make herself known, the two men had entered the room, and were passing slowly through it. She understood at once that Twing had slipped out into a janitor’s room in the rear, where he had evidently forced an interview and explanation from his interrupter, and now had been waiting for the audience to disperse before emerging by the front door. They had evidently overlooked her in the shadow.

“But,” said the stranger, as if following an aggrieved line of apology, “if Barstow knew who you were, and what you’d done, and still thought you good enough to rastle round here and square up them Pike County fellers and them kids–what in thunder do you care if the others DO find you out, as long as Barstow sticks to you?”

“I’ve told you why, Dick,” returned Twing gloomily.

“Oh, the schoolma’am!”

“Yes, she’s a saint, an angel. More than that–she’s a lady, Dick, to the tip of her fingers, who knows nothing of the world outside a parson’s study. She took me on trust–without a word–when the trustees hung back and stared. She’s never asked me about myself, and now when she knows who and what I have been–she’ll loathe me!”