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He stood about, restless and uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping she would repent and come to find him.

But she did not.

Then he began to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong.

It was a hard struggle with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and entered.

She was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with her face to the wall.

Tom's heart smote him.

He went to her and stood a moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed.

Then he said hesitatingly:

"Becky, I-I don't care for anybody but you."

No reply-but sobs.

"Becky"-pleadingly. "Becky, won't you say something?"

More sobs.

Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an andiron, and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said:

"Please, Becky, won't you take it?"

She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. Presently Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door; he was not in sight; she flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. Then she called:

"Tom! Come back, Tom!"

She listened intently, but there was no answer.

She had no companions but silence and loneliness.

So she sat down to cry again and upbraid herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers about her to exchange sorrows with.

TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog.

He crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit.

Half an hour later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff Hill, and the school-house was hardly distinguishable away off in the valley behind him.

CHAPTER VIII

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