“You may resume your lessons.”
In one corner a fly, caught in a spider’s web, droned complainingly. From a nearby bush there came the liquid notes of a wild canary, while faint and from far away there came the low of a cow. Save for the occasional swish of a turned page, no other sound disturbed the Sabbath-like stillness of the school room. And, as Florence’s glance strayed to the hillside and sentinal rock, she saw that the silent watcher was gone.
Had Florence been able to open the book of the future and to read there an account of the far reaching events that were to come out of the moments that had just passed, she would have been surprised and startled. As she could not, she could only wonder, and in her heart there was a feeling of dread.
The hours that followed were filled with a strange, subdued silence. The careless rustle of pages was gone. Gone, too, was the uneasy shuffle of feet on the plain board floor. Children recited in tones little above a whisper. It was as if the room were empty; no children there. And yet, there they were. Florence saw them with her eyes, but when she closed her eyes she was subject to an illusion, a feeling that they had vanished.
When the last long hours had dragged its way to a weary end, the children crept silently away. On the soft soil their bare feet made no sound, and from their lips there came never a whisper.
Bud Wax was the last to leave and looking neither to right nor left, with his head upon his breast he disappeared at once in the shadows of a paw-paw thicket.
Marion had gone ahead with some of the younger children to help them across the river.
Florence remained behind. As the last child disappeared from sight, she left the schoolhouse to strike off up the leafy bank and on up the hillside until, quite out of breath from climbing, she threw herself upon a soft bed of ferns to bury her face in her hands and burst out crying.
As she lay there pressing her throbbing temples, it seemed to her that all worth while things in the world had passed away. Being only a girl, she could not fathom the depth of emotion nor measure the flood tide of bitterness that flowed over her soul. She only knew that at last memory came to her rescue, the memory of an old, old story in the Bible of a man who, having won a marvelous victory over great odds, had gone far away into the wilderness to at last throw himself prostrate upon the ground and ask that he might die.
As the girl recalled the story she felt that she had much in common with this old prophet of Israel. The enemy of her school had tried to destroy it. She had defeated his end. How long she would remain victor she could not tell. She only knew that to-day she had won.