The schoolmistress of Pine Clearing was taking a last look around her schoolroom before leaving it for the day.

She might have done so with pride, for the schoolroom was considered a marvel of architectural elegance by the citizens, and even to the ordinary observer was a pretty, villa-like structure, with an open cupola and overhanging roof of diamond-shaped shingles and a deep Elizabethan porch.

But it was the monument of a fierce struggle between a newer civilization and a barbarism of the old days, which had resulted in the clearing away of the pines--and a few other things as incongruous to the new life and far less innocent, though no less sincere.

It had cost the community fifteen thousand dollars, and the lives of two of its citizens.
Happily there was no stain of this on the clean white walls, the beautifully-written gilt texts, or the shining blackboard that had offered no record which could not be daily wiped away.

And, certainly, the last person in the world to suggest any reminiscences of its belligerent foundation was the person of the schoolmistress.