r was unaware of this state of
mind. He was buoyed up by the sentiments of enthusiastic admiration
and approval that he carried with him in the testimonials from his last
board of trustees in town, with which sentiments he fully agreed, and
hence he greeted the pupils of the little backwoods school with an airy
condescension that reduced the school to a condition of speechless and
indignant astonishment. The school was prepared to tolerate the man who
should presume to succeed their former master, if sufficiently humble,
but certainly not to accept airy condescension from him.

"Does he think we're babies?" asked Don, indignantly.

"And did you see him trying to chop at recess?" (REE'cis, Hughie called
it.) "He couldn't hit twice in the same place."

"And he asked me if that beech there was a maple," said Bob Fraser, in
deep disgust.

"Oh, shut up your gab!" said Ranald, suddenly. "Give the man a chance,
anyway."

"Will YOU bring an excuse when you're absent, Ranald?" asked Hughie.

"And where would I be getting it?" asked Ranald, grimly, and all the
boys realized the absurdity of expecting a written excuse for Ranald's
absence from his father. Macdonald Dubh was not a man to be bothered
with such trifles.

"You might get it from your Aunt Kirsty, Ranald," said Don, slyly. The
boys shouted at the suggestion.

"And she could do it well enough if it would be necessary," said Ranald,
facing square round on Don, and throwing up his head after his manner
when battle was in the air, while the red blood showed in his dark cheek
and his eyes lit up with a fierce gleam. Don read the danger signal.

"I'm not saying she couldn't," he hurried to say, apologetically, "but
it would be funny, wouldn't it?"

"Well," said Ranald, relenting and smiling a little, "it would be
keeping her busy at times."

"When the deer are running, eh, Ranald," said Murdie, good-naturedly.
"But Ranald's right, boys," he continued, "give the man a chance, say
I."

"There's our bells," cried Thomas Finch, as the deep, musical boom of
the Finch's sleigh-bells came through the bush. "Come on, Hughie, we'll
get them at the cross." And followed by Hughie and the boys from the
north, he set off for the north cross-roads, where they would meet
the Finch's bob-sleighs coming empty from the saw-mill, to the great
surprise and unalloyed delight of Mr. and Mrs. Bushy, who from their
crotch in the old beech had watched with some anxiety the boys' unusua