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I congratulate you," exclaimed the young man fervidly. "And I'll wager that you went to school at a cross-roads school-house and rode to town in a farm wagon to see a circus that had lions and elephants; and you probably chopped wood and broke colts and went swimming in an old swimmin'-hole and did all the other things you read about in American biographies and story books.

It was not a long walk from Ruth's home to the school-house, yet if it were to be measured by Shefford's emotion the distance would have been unending.

As soon as Harry and old Tom were able to move about, they begged that Mr Hart would allow them to assist him in his labours. Harry would gladly have tried to teach the natives, but his ignorance of their language prevented him being of use in that way. They both, however, could carpenter and dig, and accordingly helped in fitting up the school-house, which had just been erected.

To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of Famine descending upon the earth or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield. His school-house was a low building of one large room, rudely constructed of logs, the windows partly glazed and partly patched with leaves of old copybooks.

A knock brought him to the school-house door, with a candle in his hand and a look of inquiry on his face, which had grown thin and careworn since Jude last set eyes on him. That after all these years the meeting with Mr. Phillotson should be of this homely complexion destroyed at one stroke the halo which had surrounded the school-master's figure in Jude's imagination ever since their parting.

Glanyravon Park lay, as we have said, in the parish of which Mr Jonathan Prothero was vicar, but as the parish and park were large, the house was three or four miles from the church; and it was on account of this distance of Glanyravon and its dependencies from church and school, that Miss Gwynne had induced her father to build the school-house, of which mention has been already made, since there was a large school in the village for such children as were within its reach.

But Allan, to whom he had one day hinted the possibility of this gracious occurrence, had reminded him brutally that they would probably have school in the Methodist church until a new school-house could be built. For Allan loved his school and his teacher. But a life of evil promised other joys besides this negative one of no school.

Billy's arms went round like the sails of a windmill; the "hymns of lofty cheer" not only "shook the depths of the desert gloom," but the small children on their little benches, and the school-house literally rang "to the anthems of the free!"

It'll be twice as good then; an' such singin' as was never heard before in any school-house on the island, I'll warrant me. I'm to have the piano over for the day to the school-house. Archie and Sandy'll move it in a big wagon, to save me payin' for the cartin'; an' I'm to pay a half-pound for the use of it if it's not hurt, a dear bargain, but she'd not let it go a shilling less.

I would never be the one to lead the multitude and accomplish by force what the Government does not believe is opportune. No! If I ever saw the multitude armed for such a purpose, I would put myself on the side of the Government. And I would fight it, for in such a mob I would not see my country. I wish for its welfare: that is the reason that I am erecting the school-house.