if, looking through these, one
were catching sight of a soul ablaze. They were like the dull glow of a
furnace through an inky night.

He was constitutionally and habitually lazy, but in a reading lesson he
would rouse himself at times, and by his utterance of a single line
make the whole school sit erect. Friday afternoon he gave up to what he
called "the cultivation of the finer arts." On that afternoon he would
bring his violin and teach the children singing, hear them read and
recite, and read for them himself; and no greater punishment could be
imposed upon the school than the loss of this afternoon.

"Man alive! Thomas, he's mighty queer," Hughie explained to his friend.
"When he sits there with his feet on the stove smoking away and reading
something or other, and letting them all gabble like a lot of ducks,
it just makes me mad. But when he wakes up he puts the fear of death on
you, and when he reads he makes you shiver through and through. You know
that long rigmarole, 'Friends, Romans, countrymen'? I used to hate
it. Well, sir, he told us about it last Friday. You know, on Friday
afternoons we don't do any work, but just have songs and reading, and
that sort of thing. Well, sir, last Friday he told us about the big row
in Rome, and how Caesar was murdered, and then he read that thing to
us. By gimmini whack! it made me hot and cold. I could hardly keep from
yelling, and every one was white. And then he read that other thing, you
know, about Little Nell. Used to make me sick, but, my goodness alive!
do you know, before he got through the girls were wiping their eyes, and
I was almost as bad, and you could have heard a pin drop. He's mighty
queer, though, lazy as the mischief, and always smiling and smiling, and
yet you don't feel like smiling back."

"Do you like him?" asked Thomas, bluntly.

"Dunno. I'd like to, but he won't let you, somehow. Just smiles at you,
and you feel kind of small."

The reports about the master were conflicting and disquieting, and
although Hughie was himself doubtful, he stood up vehemently for him at
home.

"But, Hughie," protested the minister, discussing these reports, "I am
told that he actually smokes in school."

Hughie was silent.

"Answer me! Does he smoke in school hours?"

"Well," confessed Hughie, reluctantly, "he does sometimes, but only
after he gives us all our work to do."

"Smoke in school hours!" ejaculated Mrs. Murray, horrified.

"Well, what's the ha