ng--a motive for the wonderful things they were to
accomplish in the way of making money for their grandfather, and as a
means of triumphing over Jacob Holt, whom they were inclined to regard
as the villain of their life-story.

From all the drawbacks common to the old-time schools in this part of
Canada, Gershom High-School had, to some extent, suffered. The
restraints of limited means, the value of the labour even of children on
a new farm, the frequent change of teachers, the endless variety of
text-books, the vexing elements of national prejudice and religious
differences, had told on its efficiency and success. Yet it had been a
power for good in Gershom and in all the country round. From the
earliest settlement of the place the leading men had taken pains to
encourage and support it. Its teachers had generally been college
students from the neighbouring States, who taught one year to get money
to carry them through the next, or graduates who were willing to pass a
year or two in teaching between their college course and their choice or
pursuit of a profession. Among them had come, now and then, a youth of
rare gifts, one, not only strong to govern and skilled to teach, but who
kindled in the minds of the pupils an eager desire for self-improvement,
an enthusiasm of mental activity which outlasted his term of office, and
which influenced for good a far greater number than those whom he
taught, or with whom he came personally in contact.

Mr Burnet, Davie's teacher, was not one of these. His college days had
long been over, before he crossed the sea. He had been unfortunate in
many ways, but most of all in this, that he had been brought up to
consider wise and right that which became sin and misery to him, because
of the strength of his appetite and the weakness of his will. And so
woeful days came to him and his, and he was sent over the sea, as so
many another has been sent, to be out of sight. But on this side of the
sea, too, woeful days awaited him, and after many a to and fro, he was
stranded, an utter wreck as it seemed, on the village of Gershom. His
wife was dead by this time, and his two forlorn little daughters had
been sent home in rags to their mother's sister, and there was no
visible reason why the wretched man should not die also, except, as he
said to them who tried to help him, that, after all, his soul might have
a chance to be saved.

He did not die; he lived a free man, and when the