The Silver Maple Part 16

Gabby Johnny peered through the smoke and discerned his enemy, evidently rejoicing over his evil work.

"Ah, ye ill piece!" he shouted, stepping up to the boy and shaking his fist in his face, "Ah kenned it was you! Aye, Ah kenned! If there's ony scandal'us goin's on ye'll be in it! It's an evil end ye're comin'

til, wi' yer goin's on; aye, that's what ye are! Ye neither fear G.o.d, nor regard man! Sik a like onceevilised----"

Now Gabby Johnny was prepared upon all occasions to prove his right to his sobriquet, and Dan Murphy well knew he would not stop until he had driven Scotty to extreme measures, so here he mercifully interfered in his friend's behalf. He had no mind to defy a trustee, so, being of a diplomatic turn, determined to divert the tide of wrath by the simple expedient of producing a counter-irritant. He slipped out quietly from the line of culprits, and s.n.a.t.c.hing up a well-packed s...o...b..ll hurled it straight and true at the team standing in the road. The missile was a hard one, and the nervous young colts, their heads erect, their nostrils indignant, went jingling off down the road, their heels sending a fine snowstorm over the old bobsleigh, leaping in their wake.

Gabby Johnny heard his bells and his eloquence suddenly ceased. At the same instant Dan burst in upon him, his eyes starting from his head, his breath coming in gasps.

"Sure, your team's runnin' away!" he bawled. "They're runnin' away! I can't stop them; they're gone clane wild!"

Gabby Johnny waited neither to hear nor deliver more. He darted out and down the road, followed by a hailstorm of s...o...b..a.l.l.s and the joyful cheers of Number Nine. And as he went he howled breathless anathemas, alternately at his wayward horses and back at the yelling mob behind him, both couched in language little calculated to raise the moral status of the already besmirched school.

But the boys' trouble was not over; they returned from the rout of the trustee only to find the new master entering the scene of destruction.

He stood and looked about him with a manner just as quiet, but no graver, than usual.

"How did the fire start?" he asked calmly.

The dauntless three stepped forward, headed by Scotty. In the old days confession to McAllister did not appear in the code of schoolboy honour; but there was something about this man, even though Scotty cordially hated him, which demanded fair dealing. The new master looked them over in a manner that was hardly complimentary. His eyebrows rose.

"Children!" was all he said, but the word made Scotty writhe. Then he did not scold or rave as the boys half-wished he would. He quietly dismissed all but the three culprits, and saying he would give them that afternoon and the next day to bring the school back to the condition in which they had found it, and that done, he would prefer that they remain at home under their parents' control for a month or so, he turned on his heel and walked away with an air that said plainly that this was no affair of his and was regarded by him with calm indifference.

The boys were completely taken aback. Hitherto school discipline had consisted exclusively of thrashings, which though uncomfortable had some honour attached. But here was a new departure; to have to undo all one's mischief, and then be contemptuously dismissed was a serious affair. The new master acted as though he were the King of England too, and certainly, with Gabby Johnny at his back, he was not to be trifled with.

When the three arrived the next morning, armed with whitewash and brushes, Dan and Hash were rather inclined to feel subdued, but not so Scotty. In his home discipline was not so rigid as in that of the other two, and his grandparents had not even heard of his escapade.

And his heart was still raging hot against the new master. The man had dared to tell him he lied! The remembrance of it and Monteith's air of calm superiority maddened him. How he longed to knock him down and hear him take back his statement. Well, he could not do that, it seemed, but he would wreak his vengeance in some other way.

So with Scotty in this mood the work of reparation did not go on very steadily. His two companions tried to attend to business, but soon found it impossible. They were alone in the forest with unlimited whitewash; and with Scotty inciting them to deeds of daring, how could they resist? They started by enduring their leader's pranks, and ended by embracing them, and when their morning's task was completed not even McAllister's ghost, could it have appeared, would have recognised its old haunts.

Yet no one could say the boys had not done their work, for they had whitewashed the school with a thoroughness even Store Thompson's wife would never have attempted. The only fault was the lack of discrimination shown by the decorators. Some critics might have considered the coating of the floor and the desks a work of supererogation. But the boys were not stingy; they whitewashed everything with an impartial and lavish generosity; the walls, the ceiling, the blackboard, the furniture. Yes, even the stove and stovepipes were rubbed until they fairly radiated whiteness, and stood out spectrally in their pallid surroundings, like the ghost of some departed heater. Scotty gave the new master's desk an extra coat, and even polished up a stray book and dinner pail, unluckily left behind the day before, just to have them in harmony with their environment.

When at last the work was finished and the three bespattered workmen prepared to depart, Dan declared in an oratorical address delivered from the top of the master's snowy desk, that they had n.o.bly done their duty, for had they not carried out the new master's instructions and whitewashed the school?

And when they turned the white key in the white door and stole off in three directions through the forest, bursting with mirth, they vowed they had not experienced such a season of pure joy since the night Gabby Johnny's waggon had arisen, like Charles's Wain, in the heavens!

X

IN THE REALMS OF GOLD

Not to be conquered by these headlong days, But to stand free: to keep the mind at brood On life's deep meaning, nature's alt.i.tude Of loveliness, and time's mysterious ways; At every thought and deed to clear the haze Out of our eyes, considering only this, What man, what life, what love, what beauty is, This is to live and win the final praise.

--ABCHIBALD LAMPMAN.

Upon his return home, Scotty went out behind the house to work off some of his superfluous mirth upon the woodpile. He had flung aside his coat and was swinging his axe vigorously, when, with the quickness of the rural eye which always spies an approaching figure, he noticed a man turn in from the highway and walk briskly up the snowy lane. The boy gave a low whistle; his face grew dark with anger. It was the new master! He had found out the condition of the school then, and had come to report to his grandparents. McAllister at his worst was better than this fellow, for McAllister was no sneak. But even in his anger, he chuckled mischievously when he considered what an exhibition Monteith would surely make of himself if he attempted to lodge complaints with Big Malcolm against his grandson.

But instead of turning up the path to the door, the new master followed the track that led round the house under the Silver Maple.

At first Scotty was of a mind to dodge round the woodpile and escape; but he was too late; Monteith had already caught sight of him; so he waited, sullen and defiant.

The new master lost no time in making his errand known.

"I came to offer an apology, Ralph Stanwell," he said gravely, "for what I said concerning your name. I found out my mistake only this afternoon."

Scotty's defiant air changed to one of amazement; his eyes fell, he felt suddenly ashamed.

"I hope you will accept an explanation, though it does not at all atone for what I said," continued the schoolmaster earnestly. "I am truly ashamed of myself for making such a stupid blunder."

Scotty squirmed in embarra.s.sment. He had never in his life witnessed any such dignified reparation of a wrong, and in contrast, his own late conduct looked childish and almost barbarous.

"Oh, it will not matter, whatever," he stammered abruptly, and in a manner much more ungracious than his feelings warranted.

"But it does matter very much. It was no way for one man to speak to another."

Scotty experienced a glow of mingled pride and shame; the new master considered him a man then, and he had not played the man's part! "But, you see," continued Monteith, "I felt so sure. It was your Highland accent, and your--your general MacDonald appearance that to my ignorance made your statement unbelievable."

The schoolmaster had unwittingly struck the right chord.

Scotty smiled shyly but amicably. "Oh, it will be jist nothing," he said generously.

"Won't you shake hands, then, and let me feel I am quite forgiven?"

But Scotty did not put out his hand; he stood shifting from one foot to the other, looking down at the heap of chips.

"But--I--would you not be knowing?" he faltered.

"Knowing what?"

"That we--that I would be making the schoolhouse worse than ever?"

There was a sudden light in Monteith's eyes that would have surely convinced Scotty, had he seen it, of the new master's ability to smile.

"Well, perhaps that will help to even things up a little," he said brightly. "Come, are you willing to call it quits?"

Scotty put out his big hand swiftly, and felt it caught in a strong bony grip. And as their hands met Monteith's stern face suddenly broke out into an unexpected smile, a smile so brilliant and kindly that the boy felt it illuminate his whole being, and from that moment he was the new master's friend.

"And now," said the man, suddenly becoming grave again, "will you tell me how you come to have two names? How does a Highland Scot like you happen to have such a name as Stanwell?"

Scotty gasped; was he going to ignore the whitewashing altogether?

"It would be my father's," he answered simply, "but I would always be living here with my grandfather, and I was always called MacDonald."

"Ralph Stanwell, Ralph Stanwell," repeated the schoolmaster ruminatingly, "I've heard that name before. Why, yes; I wonder if you are any relation to the Captain Ralph Stanwell I once met in Toronto.

The name is not common."

"My father died there, and my mother, too," was the answer.

The new master stared. "Surely, surely," he was saying, half to himself, "it couldn't be possible; but his wife's name was MacDonald too! And Herbert always said the child died!"