The teacher, a kind, elderly man, went to the school-house door and watched the tumult benignly from beneath the steel-bowed spectacles that had been hastily thrust across his forehead. His face, which had been severe, in a strained effort to keep up the dignity of his school, now beamed with infinite satisfaction, and rubbing his hands gleefully, he was sorely tempted to take a share in the fun himself. Damming up a torrent like that which came tumbling across the road, was something worth while, even for a man.
The boys rushed down to the swollen brook where it entered the gulley and made a tumultuous descent to the river, which was only concealed from the bulk windows of the school-house by a growth of young hemlocks that contrasted richly with the crusted snow. Here the boys were bound to make a dam big enough to drown a fellow in, neck and heels. Who cared for the mud? Who was afraid of the snow? Hurrah! hurrah! come on all hands and pitch in. There is a broken rail. Look out for the loose stones in that tumble-down, old wall. Bring up drift wood from the river, dead branches from the trees; tear loads of moss from the white oak stumps; bring any thing, every thing. Had any boy pluck enough to drag out some logs from the school wood pile? "Oh, golly! there is the master standing square in the door, and little Paul, the furrener, talking to him. Hurrah! the master is sending him off to join the fun. Isn't he a trump?"
Some of the boys stood still, knee deep in the water, frightened half to death by that wicked word—trump. But Tom Hutchins cried out with wonderful audacity, "Trump! who'se afeard? He's a high, low, jack, and the game, he is! There he goes into the school-house just to give us a chance at the wood pile. Come on, boys!"
Away the little fellows went, leaping like deer out of the mud, and directly a whole team of boys came dragging a walnut log through the snow, leaving a deep path all the way from the wood pile, which the master never could be made to see, spectacles or no spectacles, anymore than he could hear the tumbling logs close under the window where he was sitting. I am inclined to think the boys were right, and that old man was a trump, though he did belong to the church.
"Hurrah! stand from under," said Tom Hutchins, looking down upon a swarm of schoolmates who were busy as bees in the mud and water of the gully. "Here comes the crowner—A number one, and no mistake. Come up here and give a boost, you chaps."
The boys sprang up the muddy sides of the gully, dripping like water-gods, reckless of wet jackets, torn trowsers, and shoes from which the water came up in gushes, and helped pitch that great, knotty log end foremost into the gully, where it was to form a line for the water to sweep over.
"Take it by the end—lift all at once—now, heave all together. Hurrah! hurrah!"
Paul had, indeed, lingered around the school-house door till the master sent him off to join the play. Then he went down to the brook and stood disconsolate on its high bank, as all this wild fun went on. He was cold and confused. No one asked him to help dam up the brook, so he stood in the snow, buried to the ears in his overcoat and comforter, and thinking that the watery sunshine was a very poor imitation of the tropical warmth in which he had formerly luxuriated.
He was at a loss how to take part in their play; besides that, the very roar of the water, and riot of the boys, reminded him of that fearful night when he was made an orphan, and so recalled his sufferings, that he longed to get beyond the sound. As for the boys, they were all too much engaged to notice his abstraction or ask his assistance.