Moreover, the habit which the Schoolteacher had acquired of taking off his hat in order to admire it before the children, seemed to adhere to him when he was by himself: Of late, those who had watched him as he passed along the mountain roads, had observed him at this habit and had marked how his face, profoundly sad when he was alone, always immediately brightened.
The school trooping about the Schoolteacher was emerging from the grove when the minister got out of his buggy.
He tied the horse to a sapling with one of the lines. Then he drew his cotton gloves a little closer over his hands, buttoned his long black coat down to its last button, and stood out in the road to await the coming of the School-teacher. The children and the School-teacher stopped when they saw him. The pleasant laughing voices ceased. The children gathered around the School-teacher. The smallest ones came close up and took hold of his hands.
The minister addressed the Schoolteacher. His voice was high and sharp.
“Do you know what the school children have done?”
The School-teacher regarded the minister with his deep, calm, gray-blue eyes.
“Did you know that they were going to do it?”
The lines in the minister's face hardened.
“That's all I wanted to know,” he said. “It is now perfectly evident that you are no fit person to have charge of school children. The community must get rid of you.”
He turned about in the road, untied his horse, got into his buggy and took up the lines. He raised one of the lines in his cotton-gloved hand to bring it down on the horse's back, but he paused with his arm extended, and turned about toward the School-teacher. He thrust his head to one side. His defective eye straining to see.
“Do you have any fear of God at all?” he said.
The School-teacher's calm, gentle voice did not change, it did not hesitate. “No,” he said, “none at all.”
|ON SATURDAY morning the miller hailed the doctor as he was passing the mill.
“Are you goin' over to Black's?” she called.
“Yes,” he said, “they sent me word to come.”
“Did his eye get well of itself?” inquired the doctor.
“No, it didn't git well of itself,” replied the woman. “It never would have got well of itself. Ole Jerry's been set-tin' around with that eye tied up ever since the day that he thrashed out his wheat. He'd a-been blind in it all the rest of his life if it hadn't a-been for the School-teacher.”