It was a bitter winter on Prince Edward Island. By New Year's time the
roads were many of them wellnigh impassable with snow. Fierce winds
swept to and fro, obliterating tracks by noon which had been clear in
the morning; and nobody went abroad if he could help it. New Year's Day
opened fiercest of all, with scurries of snow, lowering sky, and a wind
that threatened to be a gale before night. But, for all that, the
tying-posts behind the Wissan Bridge school-house were crowded full of
steaming horses under buffalo-robes, which must stamp and paw and
shiver, and endure the day as best they might, while the New Year's
examination went on. Everybody had come. The fame of the singing of the
Wissan Bridge school had spread far and near, and it had been whispered
about that there was to be a "piece" sung which was finer than anything
ever sung in the Charlottetown churches.
The school-house was decorated with evergreens,--pine and spruce. The
New Year's Day having fallen on a Monday, Little Bel had had a clear
working-day on the Saturday previous; and her faithful henchmen, Archie
and Sandy, had been busy every evening for a week drawing the boughs on
their sleds and piling them up in the yard.
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