ure in the midst of them, his
coat on his arm and the children's hands in his, there among them came
Crebiche, now on one side, now running round to the other, hoping so
to get a little nearer to the master.

[4] _Ecrevisse_, crawfish.

"None shall have such kindness to-day as thou," Bonaventure would
silently resolve as he went in through a gap in the _pieux_. And the
children could not see but he treated them all alike. They saw no
unjust inequality even when, Crebiche having three times spelt "earth"
with an _u_, the master paced to and fro on the bare ground among the
unmatched desks and break-back benches, running his hands through his
hair and crying:--

"Well! well aht thou name' the crawfish; with such rapiditive
celeritude dost thou progress backwardly!"

It must have been to this utterance that he alluded when at the close
of that day he walked, as he supposed, with only birds and
grasshoppers for companions, and they grew still, and the turtle-doves
began to moan, and he smote his breast and cried:

"Ah! rules, rules! how easy to make, likewise break! Oh! the shame,
the shame! _If_ Victor Hugo had seen that! And if George Washington!
But thou,"--some one else, not mentioned,--"thou sawedst it!"

The last word was still on the speaker's lips, when--there beside the
path, with heavy eye and drunken frown, stood the father of Crebiche,
the son of Catou, the little boy of twenty-five known as Chat-oue. He
spoke:

"To who is dat you speak? Talk wid de dev'?"

Bonaventure murmured a salutation, touched his hat, and passed.
Chat-oue moved a little, and delivered a broadside:

"Afteh dat, you betteh leave! Yes, you betteh leave Gran' Point'!"

"Sir," said Bonaventure, turning with flushed face, "I stay."

"Yes," said the other, "dass righ'; you betteh go way and
stay. _Magicien_," he added as the schoolmaster moved on,
"_sorcier!_--Voudou!--jackass!"

What did all this mean?

CHAPTER VI.

WAR OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT.

Catou, it seems, had gone one day to College Point with a pair of wild
ducks that he had shot,--first of the season,--and offered them to the
priest who preached for Grande Pointe once a quarter.

"Catou," said the recipient, in good French but with a cruel hardness
of tone, "why does that man out there teach his school in English?"
The questioner's intentions were not unkind. He felt a protector's
care for his Acadian sheep, whose wants he fancied he, if not he only,
und