She heard a voice like the principal teacher's, say in a lapping, watery way, "Miss Byerly, what is the meaning of this? Your division is in disorder. Nobody has recited. Unless you are ill I must suspend you and call another teacher here."
"Help! I'm floating off upon the river. Save me! I drown! I drown!"
The scholars were all up and excited. The principal motioned another lady teacher to come, and laid Podge's head in the other's lap.
"Is it brain fever?" he asked.
"She has been under great excitement," Podge heard the other lady say. "The Zane murder occurred in her family. Last night, I have been told, Miss Byerly refused Mr. Bunn, our principal school director, and a man of large means, who had long been in love with her."
"Where is he?" said the principal.
"I heard it from his sister," said the other lady. "Mortified at her refusal, because confident that she would accept him, he sailed this day for Europe."
These were the last words Podge Byerly heard. Then it seemed that the waters closed over her head.
Agnes, left alone in the homestead, had a few days of perfect relief, except from anonymous letters and newspaper clippings delivered by mail. That refined handwriting which had steadily poured out the venom of some concealed hostility survived all other correspondence—delicate as the graceful circles of the tiniest fish-hooks whose points and barbs enter deepest in the flesh.