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.

"He's takin' it in quick the way the bairn's got them a' in hand,"
thought John. "If only she can hold hersel' cool now!"

No danger. Bel was not the one to lose a battle by appearing to quail in
the outset, however clearly she might see herself outnumbered. And
sympathetic and eager glances from her constables, Archie and Sandy,
told her that they were all ready for the fray. These glances Sandy