The Silent Alarm Part 27

A half hour later the two young teachers, each hurrying toward the other, met half way between the whipsawed house and the school.

"Oh, Florence! I've found it!" Marion exclaimed.

And Florence at the same instant cried, "Marion, we won! We won!"

Throwing themselves into each others arms, they laughed and cried together. After that they sat side by side on a log and calmly told their stories.

To Florence, the thrilling climax of the election had been a revelation.

Bud Wax had provided the great surprise. Won over by who knows what course of reasoning, he had taken the side of his teachers. Having seen Florence entering the forbidden gateway, he had followed as her protector. While playing this role, he had broken his arm. He had spent the past few days convincing those strange people "up yonder" that it was their duty to come down to the mouth of the creek and vote in the school election. Convinced by his argument, and Florence's watchful care over Hallie, they had consented to come.

"And just when we thought all was lost," Florence exclaimed, "here they came, everyone of them, to vote for Ransom Turner.

"And now," she hurried on, "they've decided that the folks at the mouth of the creek are not such bad neighbors after all. They're going to send their children down to our school."

"Oh, Florence!" Marion clasped her hands in an ecstasy of joy. "It's going to be such a school! A real new school building with two rooms, new seats and stoves and everything!"

"Why! How-"

"I found the gold!"

"Where?"

"It was in the heart of the pounding mill. I tipped it over, and it sort of clinked. I thumped it here and there until I found that the hole where they pounded the corn had a false bottom. I pried it up and there was the gold!"

"Confederate gold?"

"No, not Confederate gold, but Georgia and Carolina gold. There never was any Confederate gold. None ever was coined. I received a letter about that from the museum this morning. The Confederate States coined a few silver half-dollars. All the rest of their money was paper."

For a moment the two girls sat in silent contemplation of their great good fortune and the joyous future that lay before them.

"There isn't such a lot of gold," Marion said at last. "Forty or fifty pieces, that's all, but each piece is worth several times its value in gold, so there will be enough."

"Quite enough," murmured Florence contentedly. "And we shall have a school! Such a school!"

The schoolhouse was yet to be built. That this might be accomplished, grateful mountaineers sent their teams over the mountains for windows, doors, seats and hardware, while others, manning a small sawmill, got out the lumber. When the time came for beginning the construction, there was a "workin'." Mountain folks came for miles around; men with hammers, axes and saws, women with pots and pans and all manner of good things to eat.

Men worked, women cooked. They made a holiday of it, and before the sun went down that day the two room school building was two-thirds done.

"Hit's the way us mounting folks be," said old Uncle Billie, rubbing his hands together. "If'n we all likes you we likes you a right smart, an'

if'n we all don't take to you, we can be meaner'n pisen."

The school was a success in every way. Long before the term came to an end Laurel Branch was looking forward to better things.

One day two months after the school began, Florence received a letter from Mr. Dobson, the coal man. With trembling fingers she tore it open. A small bit of paper fell out. s.n.a.t.c.hing it up, she read:

"Pay to the order.... Nineteen hundred and sixty dollars!"

"Oh Marion! Marion!" she fairly screamed. "Here's our commission!"

"That money," said Mrs. McAlpin, as they sat in fireside council that night, "is your own. You earned it fairly. It is no longer needed for the school. If you feel you must give some, give a tenth of it to the school.

It is your duty to use the remainder in completing your own education."

It was some time before the two girls could be brought to see the matter in this light. Perhaps they feared life would lose its thrill if they were no longer dependent upon their muscles and their wits for their living. In the end they yielded. When, after finis.h.i.+ng the winter school, they left the mountains for the University, it was with a full purse.

Florence found that the possession of money did not necessarily rob one of the thrills that life should have. Had she not been free to wander about the city she would not have wandered into a curious place back of the Ghetto at 777 Monroe Street. Had she not been possessed of an unusual amount of cash, she would not have made an extraordinary purchase there, and having missed the purchase, would have lost an unusually romantic and mysterious adventure as well. But she did make the purchase and the adventure came-but the story is a long one and will be found in our next book ent.i.tled "The Thirteenth Ring."

THE END