deal more, however.  Little Bel’s heart sank within her as she saw the foremost figure entering the room.  What evil destiny had brought Sandy Bruce in the character of school visitor that day?—­Sandy Bruce, retired school-teacher himself, superintendent of the hospital in Charlottetown, road-master, ship-owner, exciseman,—­Sandy Bruce, whose sharp and unexpected questions had been known to floor the best of scholars and upset the plans of the best of teachers.  Yes, here he was,—­Sandy Bruce himself; and it was his fierce little Norwegian ponies, with their silver bells and fur collars, the admiration of all Charlottetown, that had made such a clatter and stamping outside, and were still keeping it up; for every time they stirred the bells tinkled like a peal of chimes.  And, woe upon woe, behind him came, not Bel’s friend and pastor, Mr. Allan, but the crusty old Dalgetty, whose doing it had been a year before, as Bel very well knew, that the five-pound supplement had been only conditionally promised.

Conflicting emotions turned Bel’s face scarlet as she advanced to meet them; the most casual observer could not have failed to see that dismay predominated, and Sandy Bruce was no casual observer; nothing escaped his keen glance and keener intuition, and it was almost with a wicked twinkle in his little hazel eyes that he said, still shaking off the snow, stamping and puffing:  “Eh, but ye were not lookin’ for me, teacher!  The minister was sent for to go to old Elspie Breadalbane, who’s dyin’ the morn; and I happened by as he was startin’, an’ he made me promise to come i’ his place; an’ I picked up my friend Dalgetty here a few miles back, wi’ his horse flounderin’ i’ the drifts.  Except for me ye’d ha’ had no board at all here to-day; so I hope ye’ll give me no bad welcome.”

As he spoke he was studying her face, where the color came and went like waves; not a thought in the girl’s heart he did not read.  “Poor little lassie!” he was thinking to himself.  “She’s shaking in her shoes with fear o’ me.  I’ll not put her out.  She’s a dainty blossom of a girl.  What’s kept her from being trodden down by these Wissan Bridge racketers, I’d like to know.”

But when he seated himself on the platform, and took his first look at the rows of pupils in the centre of the room, he was near starting with amazement.  The Wissan Bridge “racketers,” as he had mentally called them, were not to be seen.  Very well he knew many of them by sight; for his shipping business called him often to Wissan Bridge, and this was not the first time he had been inside the school-house, which had been so long the dread and terror of school boards and teachers alike.  A puzzled frown gathered between Sandy Bruce’s eyebrows as he gazed.

“What has happened to the youngsters, then?  Have they all been convarted i’ this twelvemonth?” he was thinking.  And the flitting perplexed thought did not escape the observation of John McDonald, who was as quick a reader of faces as Sandy himself, and had been by no means free from anxiety for his little Bel when he saw the redoubtable visage of the exciseman appear in the doorway.