.

"I got good news," said St. Pierre, with no softening of countenance.

"Good news?"

"Yass.--I goin' make Claude come home."

Bonaventure could only look at him in amazement. St. Pierre looked
away and continued:

"'S no use. Can't stand it no longer." He turned suddenly upon the
schoolmaster. "Why you di'n' tell me ed'cation goin' teck my boy 'way
from me?" In Bonaventure a look of distressful self-justification
quickly changed to one of anxious compassion.

"Wait!" he said. He went back into the schoolroom, leaving St. Pierre
in the open door, and said:

"Dear chil'run, I perceive generally the aspects of fatigue. You have
been good scholars. I pronounce a half-hollyday till to-morrow
morning. Come, each and every one, with lessons complete."

The children dispersed peaceably, jostling one another to shake the
schoolmaster's hand as they passed him. When they were gone he put on
his coarse straw hat, and the two men walked slowly, conversing as
they went, down the green road that years before had first brought the
educator to Grande Pointe.

"Dear friend," said the schoolmaster, "shall education be to blame for
this separation? Is not also non-education responsible? Is it not by
the non-education of Grande Pointe that there is nothing fit here for
Claude's staying?"

"You stay!"

"I? I stay? Ah! sir, I stay, yes! Because like Claude, leaving my home
and seeking by wandering to find the true place of my utility, a voice
spake that I come at Grande Pointe. Behole me! as far from my
childhood home as Claude from his. Friend,--ah! friend, what shall
I,--shall Claude,--shall any man do with education! Keep it? Like a
miser his gol'? What shall the ship do when she is load'? Dear
friend,"--they halted where another road started away through the
underbrush at an abrupt angle on their right,--"where leads this
narrow road? To Belle Alliance plantation only, or not also to the
whole worl'? So is education! That road here once fetch me at Grande
Pointe; the same road fetch Claude away. Education came whispering,
'Claude St. Pierre, come! I have constitute' you citizen of the worl'.
Come, come, forgetting self!' Oh, dear friend, education is not for
self alone! Nay, even self is not for self!"

"Well, den,"--the deep-voiced woodman stood with one boot on a low
stump, fiercely trimming a branch that he had struck from the parent
stem with one blow of his big, keen clasp-knife,--"self not for
self,--for what he