--Not
yet!--One minute mo'!--Have the patience. Hold every one in his aw her
place. Be ready! Have the patience." But at length when the little
ones were frowning and softly sighing with the pain of upheld arms,
their waiting eyes saw his dilate. "Be ready!" he said, with low
intensity: "Be ready!" He soared to his tiptoes, the hat flounced from
his head and smote his thigh, his eyes turned upon them blazing, and
he cried, "Ring, chil'run, ring!"

The elfin crew leaped up the ropes and came crouching down. The bell
pealed; the master's hat swung round his head. His wide eyes were
wet, and he cried again, "Ring! ring! for God, light, libbutty,
education!" He sprang toward the leaping, sinking mass; but the right
feeling kept his own hands off. And up and down the children went, the
bell answering from above, peal upon peal; when just as they had
caught the rhythm of Claude's sturdy pull, and the bell could sound no
louder, the small cords gave way from their fastenings, the little
ones rolled upon their backs, the bell gave one ecstatic double clang
and turned clear over, the swift rope straightened upward from its
coil, and Claude and Sidonie, her hands clasped upon each other about
the rope and his hands upon hers, shot up three times as high as their
finest leap could have carried them. For an instant they hung; then
with another peal the bell turned back and they came blushing to the
floor. A swarm of hands darted to the rope, but Bonaventure's was on
it first.

"'Tis sufficient!" he said, his face all triumph. The bell gave a
lingering clang or two and ceased, and presently the happy company
walked across the green. "Sufficient," the master had said; but it was
more than sufficient. In that moment of suspension, with Sidonie's
great brown frightened eyes in his, and their four hands clasped
together, Claude had learned, for his first lesson, that knowledge is
not the only or the greatest power.

CHAPTER V.

INVITED TO LEAVE.

After that, every school-day morning Claude rang the bell. Always full
early his pirogue came gliding out of the woods and up through the
bushy fen to the head of canoe navigation and was hauled ashore.
Bonaventure had fixed his home near the chapel and not far from
Claude's landing-place. Thus the lad could easily come to his door
each morning at the right moment--reading it by hunter's signs in
nature's book--to get the word to ring. There were none of the usual
reasons that t