long, lank superintendent in his Sunday black, and believing in many
wonders secreted above the dusty rafters or in the wide yellow cupboards.
The first classes were nearest the door. The young ladies, if we make
reasonable allowance for an occasional natural preoccupation induced by
their consciousness of the proximity of the young men, were devoted
students of the gospel a interpreted by Brother Tresize, and sufficiently
saintly always, presuming that no disturbing element such as a new hat or
an unfamiliar dress was introduced to awaken the critical spirit. The
young men, looking in their Sunday clothes like awkward and tawdry
imitations of their workaday selves, were instructed by Brother Spence;
and Brother Bowden, being the kindliest, gentlest, most incapable man of
the band of brothers, was given the charge of the boys' Second Class, a
class of youthful heathen, rampageous, fightable, and flippant, who made
the good man's life a misery to him, and were at war with all authority.
Peterson, Jacker Mack, Dolf Belman, Fred Cann, Phil Doon, and Dick
Haddon, and a few kindred spirits composed this class; and it was sheer
lust of life, the wildness of bush-bred boys, that inspired them with
their irreverent impishness, although the brethren professed to discover
evidence of the direct influence of a personal devil.

The superintendent arose from his stool of office and shuffled to the
edge of the small platform, rattling his hymn-book for order. Ephraim
never raised his head even in chapel, but his cold, dull eyes, under
their scrub of overhanging brow, missed nothing that was going on, as the
younger boys often discovered to their cost.

'Dearly beloved brethren, we will open this morn-in's service with that
beautiful hymn--'

Brother Shine stopped short. A powerful diversion had been created by the