He regained the path and hurried along it, hatless, dishevelled, bespattered, and oblivious to every thing save the war within. Presently there came upon him the knowledge, the certain knowledge, that Claude would come the next morning and ring the chapel bell, take his seat in school, stand in all his classes, know every lesson, and go home in the evening happy and all unchallenged of him. He groaned aloud. "Ah! Claude! To dismiss or not to dismiss, it shall not be mine! But it shall be thine, Sidonie! And whether she is for thee, Claude--so juvenile!--or for me, so unfit, unfit, unfit!--Ah! Sidonie, choose not yet!"--He stood rooted to the spot; while within easy earshot of his lightest word tripped brightly and swiftly across the path from the direction of the chapel a fawn, Claude's gift, and its mistress, Sidonie--as though she neither saw nor heard. CHAPTER VIII. AT CLAUDE'S MERCY. Time flagged not. The school shone on, within its walls making glad the teacher and the pupils with ever new achievements in knowledge and excellence. Some of the vanguard--Claude, Sidonie, Etienne, Madelaine, Henri, Marcelline--actually going into the Third Reader. Such perfection in lessons as they told about at home--such mastery of English, such satisfactory results in pronunciation and emphasis! Reading just as they talked? Oh, no, a thousand times no! The school's remoter light, its secondary influences, slowly spreading, but so slowly that only the eyes of enmity could see its increase. There were murmurs and head-shakings; but the thirteenth Sunday of the year's first quarter came, and the sermon whose withholding had been threatened was preached. And on the thirteenth Monday there was Bonaventure, still moving quietly across the green toward the schoolhouse with the children all about him. But a few days later the unexpected happened. By this time Claude's father, whose teacher, you remember, was Claude, had learned to read. One day a surveyor, who had employed him as a guide, seeing the Acadian laboring over a fragment of rural newspaper, fell into conversation with him as they sat smoking by their camp-fire, and presently caught some hint of St. Pierre's aspirations for himself and his son. "So there's a public school at Grande Pointe, is there?" "Oh, yass; fine school; hondred feet long! and fine titcher; splendid titcher; titch English." "Well, well!" laughed the surveyor. "Well, the next thing will be a railroad." St. Pierre's eyes lighted up. "You t'ink!" "Why, yes; you can't keep railroads away from a place long, once you let in the public school and teach English." "You t'ink dass good?" "What, a railroad? Most certainly. It brings immigration." "Whass dat--'migrash'n?" The surveyor explained. The next time St. Pierre came to Grande Pointe--to sell some fish--he came armed with two great words for the final overthrow of all opponents of enlightenment: "Rellroad!--'Migrash'n!"