for a while had shot its flaming arrows through
the black boles and branches, had sunk now and was gone. Only a
parting ruby glow shone through the tangle where far and wide the
echoes were calling for Claude.

"Claude! I mistook the facts in the case. There is no hope for you!
'Tis futile you try--the poem is not for you! I take every thing
back!--all back! You shall not once try! You have grasp' the
advantage! You got no business, you little rascal! _You_ dare venture
to attempt making love in my school! Claude St. Pierre, you are
dismiss' the school! Mutiny! mutiny! Claude St. Pierre, for
mutinizing, excluded the Gran' Point' school."

He tore himself from his fastenings and hastened back toward the
village. The tempest within him was as fierce as ever; but already it,
too, had turned and was coming out of the opposite quarter. The better
Bonaventure--the Bonaventure purified by fires that Grande Pointe had
no knowledge of--was coming back into his gentle self-mastery. And
because that other, that old-time Bonaventure, bound in chains deep
down within, felt already the triumph of a moment slipping from his
grasp, he silently now to the outer air, but loudly within, railed and
gnashed and tore himself the more.

He regained the path and hurried along it, hatless, dishevelled,
bespattered, and oblivious to every thing save the war within.
Presently there came upon him the knowledge, the certain knowledge,
that Claude would come the next morning and ring the chapel bell, take
his seat in school, stand in all his classes, know every lesson, and
go home in the evening happy and all unchallenged of him. He groaned
aloud.

"Ah! Claude! To dismiss or not to dismiss, it shall not be mine! But
it shall be thine, Sidonie! And whether she is for thee, Claude--so
juvenile!--or for me, so unfit, unfit, unfit!--Ah! Sidonie, choose not
yet!"--He stood rooted to the spot; while within easy earshot of his
lightest word tripped brightly and swiftly across the path from the
direction of the chapel a fawn, Claude's gift, and its mistress,
Sidonie--as though she neither saw nor heard.

CHAPTER VIII.

AT CLAUDE'S MERCY.

Time flagged not. The school shone on, within its walls making glad
the teacher and the pupils with ever new achievements in knowledge and
excellence. Some of the vanguard--Claude, Sidonie, Etienne, Madelaine,
Henri, Marcelline--actually going into the Third Reader. Such
perfection in lessons as they tol