VII

The tiger story.[Illustration: The tiger story.]

"Mighty souls!" he cried. "It's long past bed-time. It's half-past nine."

Back over the white road we went, Weston and Perry, Tim and I.

"Good-night, boys!" called the strange man cheerily from the gloom of the tavern porch.

It was the first word he had spoken on our walk home.

"Is it two million five hundred and sixty thousand, or two hundred and fifty-six thousand persons that are bitten annually by snakes in India?" cried Tim, suddenly awaking from his moody silence.

"You can go back to-morrow and find out," came from the porch.

"Good-night, Mr. Weston," returned my brother sharply.

Perry Thomas parted from us at the gate, and we stood watching his retreating figure till we lost it at the bend. Then we went in.

Standing at the foot of the stairs, with a lighted candle in his hand, Tim turned suddenly to me and said, "I thought you were going to see Weston."

"I thought you were sitting at home waiting for me to get back," I retorted.

"Can I help you upstairs?" he said.

"No, I'm going to sit awhile and smoke," I answered jauntily, "and talk—to Captain."

Tim was leaving the valley. We tied his tin trunk on the back of the buggy and he climbed to the seat beside me. Tip Pulsifer handed him a great cylindrical parcel, bound in a newspaper, and my brother held it reverently in his lap; for it was a chocolate cake, six layers high, that Mrs. Tip had baked from the scanty contents of the Pulsifer flour barrel. Tim was going to the city, and all the city people Mrs. Tip had ever seen were lean, quick-moving and nervous, a condition which she concluded was induced by starvation. So she had done her best to provide Tim against want. Her mind was the mind of Six Stars. All the village was about the buggy. Josiah Nummler had rowed down from his hill-top, and the bulge in Tim's pocket was caused by the half dozen fine pippins which the old man had brought as his farewell gift. Even Theophilus Jones left the store unguarded, and hurried over when the moment arrived that the village was to see the last of its favorite son. Mrs. Tip Pulsifer is always red about the eyes, and no way was left her to show her emotion but to toss her apron convulsively over her face and swing Cevery wildly to and fro, so that the infant's cries arose above the chorus of "good-bys" as we drove away.

"Farewell, comrade." We heard Aaron Kallaberger's stentorian tones as we clattered around the bend. "Head up—eyes front—for'a'd!"

Tim turned and waved his hat to the little company at the gate, to all the friends he had ever known, to the best he ever was to know; to Mrs. Bolum and her Isaac, feebly waving the hands that had so often helped him in time of boyish trouble; to Nanny Pulsifer and Tip; to all the worthies of the store.

Tim was off to war. He was going to take part in a greater battle than I had ever seen, for I had been one of thousands who had marched together on a common enemy. He was going forth as did Launcelot and Galahad, alone, to meet his enemies at every turn, to be sore pressed, and bruised and wounded; not to be as I was, a part of a machine, but to be the machine and the god in it, too. How I envied him! He was going forth to encounter many strange adventures, and while he was in the press, laying about him in all the glory of his strength, fighting his way against a mob, to fame and fortune, I should be dozing life away with Captain.

"Did it feel that way when you left?" said Tim. He spoke for the first time when we passed the tannery lane, and his voice was a wee bit husky.

"I suppose it's the same with everybody when they turn the bend," I answered.

"That's it exactly—at the turn in the road—when you can't see home any more—when you'd give all the world to turn back, but dare not." Tim had faced about and was looking over the valley as we climbed the long slope of the ridge. "It's just like being torn in two, isn't it?" he said.

"Naturally," said I. "Home and home people are as much a part of you as head and limbs. When I dragged you away, binding you here in the buggy with your tin trunk and your ambition, something had to snap."

"And it snapped at the bend," Tim said grimly; "when I saw the last of the house and the rambo tree at the end of the orchard."

My brother took to whistling. He started away bravely with a rollicking air, keeping time to the creaking of the buggy and the slow crunching of the horse's feet on the gravel road. Even that failed him. We were at the crest of the hill; we were turning another bend; we were in the woods, and through the trees he had a last look at Black Log. And it's such a little valley, too, that it would hardly seem worth looking back on when the rich fields of Kishikoquillas roll away before one! The lone pine on the stone cap of Gander Knob waved its farewell, and we clattered down the long slope into the great world.

He had a last look back at Black Log.[Illustration: He had a last look back at Black Log.]

"It's all over at last," said Tim, smiling, "and now I am glad I've come; for Black Log is a good place, but it's so little, after all."

"I'm afraid you will find it bigger than a desk in Western's office, and a tiny room on a cramped city street," said I.

My brother recovered his old spirit and refused to be discouraged by my pessimistic view of his expedition. He laughed gayly and pointed across the country where half a dozen spires of smoke were rising. There was the railroad. There was the great highway where his real journey was to start. There was the beginning of his great adventure. I was the last outpost of the friendly land, and he was going into the unknown. There we were to part! It was my turn to whistle and to watch the wheels as, mile by mile, they measured off the road to that last bend, where I should see no more of Tim.

There was something strange in my brother's resolve to leave Six Stars and try his fortunes in the city. Just as I had settled down to the old easy ways which my absence had made doubly dear to me, when we should have been drawn closer to each other than ever, and my dependence on him was greatest, he announced his purpose. It was only yesterday. I returned from my accustomed afternoon visit to the Wardens to find him rummaging the house for a few of his more personal belongings and stowing them away in a small, blue tin trunk that a little while before had adorned the counter in the store.

"I am going to New York," he said, not giving me time to inquire into his strange proceeding.

I laughed. Tim was joking. This was some odd prank. He had borrowed the tin trunk and was giving me a travesty on Tip Pulsifer fleeing over the mountain from his petulant spouse: for last night Tim and I had had a little tiff. For the first time I had forgotten the post-prandial pipe, and undismayed by the horrors of the famine in India or the tribulations of Sister Flora Martin, journeyed up the road to sit at Mary's side.

"Over the mountain, eh, Tim?" I laughed. "And is Tip going?"

My brother caught my meaning, but he did not smile.

"Honest," he said. "I am going to New York."

"To New York!" I cried. My crutches clattered to the floor as I sank into my chair.

"Yes," said Tim, speaking so quietly that I knew it was the truth. "Mr. Weston has given me a position in his store. It's a tea importing concern, and he owns it, though he doesn't spend much time at his business."

"I didn't think you'd leave me alone." The words were hardly spoken till I regretted them. I had spoken in spite of my better self, for what right had I to stand between my brother and a broader life? When I had gone away to see the world, he had plodded on patiently in the narrow valley to keep a home for me. Now that I was back, it was justly his turn to go beyond the mountains and learn something more than the dull routine of the farm and the sleepy village.

"I hate to leave you, Mark," he said. "But you have felt as I feel about getting away and seeing something. Still, if you really want me to stay, I'll give it up. But you are a good deal to blame. You have told me of what you saw when you were in the army. You have showed me that there are bigger things in this world than plodding after a plough, and more exciting chases than those after foxes. I want to do more than sit on a nail-keg in the store and discuss big events. I want to have a little part in them myself—you understand."

"Yes, Tim," said I, "you are right, and I'll get along first rate."

"That's the way to talk," he cried cheerfully, slapping me on the shoulder. "You won't be half as lonely here as I shall down there in a strange city; and when you clean away the supper dishes and light your pipe and think of me, I'll be lighting mine and thinking of you and——" He stopped. Captain had trotted in, and was sitting close by, looking first at one and then at the other of us quizzically. "You'll have Captain," added Tim, laughing, "and then by and by, when I am making money, you and Captain will come down to the city and we'll all smoke our pipes together—eh, Captain?"

The hound leaped up and Tim caught his forepaws and the two went dancing around the room until a long-drawn howl warned us that such bipedic capers were not to the dog's liking.

"Captain isn't going to leave home, Tim," I cried. "You mustn't expect him to take so active a part in your demonstrations of joy."

"It wasn't the delight of leaving home made me dance," returned the boy. "It was the contemplation of the time we'll have when we get together again."

"Then why go away at all?"

"There you are. A minute ago you agreed with me; you were right with me in my plan to do something in this world. Now you are using your cunning arguments to dissuade me. But you can't stop me, Mark. I've accepted the place. Mr. Weston has sent word that I am coming, and there you are. I must keep to my bargain."

"When did Weston arrange all this for you?"

"This morning. We were on Blue Gum Ridge hunting squirrels, and we got to talking over one thing and another. I guess I kind of opened up—for he's a clever man, Mark. Why, he pumped me dry. We hadn't sat there on a log very long till he knew the whole family history and about everything I had ever learned or thought of. He asked me if I intended to spend all my life here, and I said it looked that way, and then I told him how I wanted to go and do something and be somebody."

"He pumped me dry."[Illustration: "He pumped me dry."]

Tim stopped suddenly, and winked at Captain. "I told him I wanted to go away and see something as you had done, for I was weary of listening to your accounts of things you'd seen. It's awful to have to listen to another's travels. It must be fine to tell about your own."

"Well, is it my talking that's driving you away, or is it Weston's alluring offers?"

"Alluring?" Tim laughed. "I'll say for Weston, he is frank. He told me that to his mind business was worse than death. He was born to it. His father left it to him and he has to keep it going to live; but he lets his partner look after it mostly, and he is always worrying lest his partner should die and leave him with the whole thing on his hands. He told me I'd have to drudge in a dark office over books for ten hours a day, and that it would be years before I began to see any rewards. By that time I would probably decide that the old-fashioned scheme of having kings born to order was more sensible than making men wear their lives out trying to become rulers. A cow was contented, he said, because it was satisfied to stand under a tree and breathe the free air, and look up into the blue skies and over the green fields, and chew the cud. As long as the cow was satisfied with one cud it would be contented; but once the idea got abroad in the pasture that two cuds were required for a respectable cow, peace and happiness were gone forever."

"Our lanky stranger seems a wise man," said I. "In the face of all that, what did you say?"

"I told him I wasn't a cow," Tim answered.

There was no controverting such a reply, and though my sympathies were with the pessimistic Weston, I dared not raise my voice in defence of his logic as against this young brother. Tim seemed to think that the fact that he was not a cow turned from him all the force of Weston's philosophy, and insisted on going blindly on in search of another cud.

"He laughed when I said that," Tim continued, "and he said he guessed there was no sense in using figures of speech to me, but he was willing to bet that some time I would come to his way of thinking. I told him that perhaps I would when I had seen as much of men and things as he had; but now I looked about me with the mind and the eye of a yokel. That was just what I wanted to escape. He was himself talking to me from a vantage-point of superior knowledge, and the consciousness of my own inferiority was one of the main things to spur me on."

"At that he gave you up?" said I.

"He gave me up," Tim answered; "and after all, Mark, old Weston is a fine fellow. He said that there was just one thing for me to do, and that was to see and learn for myself. So he wrote to his partner to-day, and I go in the morning."

"But must you go on a day's notice?"

"The quicker the better, Mark; and you see I haven't been letting any grass grow under my feet. When Weston and I reached our conclusion, I went to the store and got the trunk. In the interval of packing, I've gone over to Pulsifer's and arranged for Tip to work regularly for you this winter, looking after the farm. He wanted to go up to Snyder County and dig for gold. He knows where there's gold in Snyder County and you may have trouble there; but when you see any signs of a break you are to tell Mrs. Tip. She says she'll head him off all right. Nanny Pulsifer, by the way, will come every day and straighten up the house. I saw Mrs. Bolum, and she said she would keep an eye on Nanny Pulsifer, for Nanny is likely to get one of her religious spells and quit work. When you hear her singing hymns around the house, you are to tell Mrs. Bolum."

"Nanny is likely to get one of her religious spells and quit work."[Illustration: "Nanny is likely to get one of her religious spells and quit work."]

"Who will look after Mrs. Bolum? To whom must I appeal when I see signs there?"

"When Mrs. Bolum fails you, Mark, write to me," Tim answered. "When you see signs of her neglecting you, drop me a line and I'll be home in three days."

"I may have to appeal to you to save me from my friends," I said, "if Tip Pulsifer goes digging gold and Nanny Pulsifer gets religion and old Mrs. Bolum belies her nature and forgets me. But anyway, if Captain and I sit here at night knee-deep in dust and cobwebs, at least we can swell our chests and talk about our brother in the city, who is making—how much?"

"Seven dollars a week!" cried Tim. "Think of it, Mark, seven dollars a week. That's more than you made as a soldier."

"We are near the last bend, Tim. Yes—I'll say good-by to Mary for you. I'll tell her that in the hurry you forgot her. And she will believe me! Why didn't you go up the hill last night, instead of sneaking off this way?—for you know you didn't forget her. That last smoke—that's right—you and Captain and I, and our pipes. I fear she did pass from our minds, but we had many things to talk over in those last hours. I promise you I will go up to-night and explain. Tell Weston about that fox on Gander Knob—of course I shall. School starts tomorrow, else I'd be after him myself; but on Saturday we'll hie to the mountain, Weston and Captain and I. You, Tim, shall have the skin, a memento of the valley. I'll say good-by to Captain again, and I'll keep the guns oiled, and Piney Carter shall have the rifle whenever he wants it—provided he cleans it every hunting night. And I'll tell old Mrs. Bolum—but the train is going to start. Are you sure you have your ticket, and your check, and your lunch? Yes, I'll say good-by to Mary for you.—Good-by, Tim!"

And Tim went around the bend.

Books! Books! Eternal, infernal books! The sun was printing over the floor the shadow skeleton of the juniper-tree by the westerly window. That always told me it was one o'clock. And one o'clock meant books again—three long hours of wrangling with dull wits, of fencing with sharper ones; three long hours of a-b-abs, of two-times-twos and three-times-threes; hours of spelling and of parsing, hours of bounding and describing. With it all, woven through it, now swelling, now dying away, now broken by a shrill cry of pain or anger, was the ceaseless buzzing of the school. There was no rest for the eye, even. The walls were white, their glare was baneful, and through the chalk-dust mist the rustling field of young heads suggested anything but peace and repose to one of my calling. That was the field I worked in.

I had been with Tim. His letter from New York was in my hands, and over and over I had read it, until I knew every twist in the writing. In the reading I had been carried away from myself, and seemed to be beside him in his battle in the world, laying about with him right lustily. Then by force of habit I had looked up and had seen the shadow of the juniper-tree. I was back in my prison. And it was books!

I was back in my prison.[Illustration: I was back in my prison.]

"Brace up there, Daniel Arker, and quit your blubbering!" I cried.

Daniel was a snuffler. Whenever I had a companion in the schoolhouse at the noon recess, it was generally this lad, and when he was there he was nursing a wound and snuffling. If there was any trouble to be got into, if there was a flying ball to come in contact with, ice to break through or a limb to snap, Daniel never failed to be on hand. Then he would burst rudely into my solitude and while I sopped cold water over his injured members, he would blubber. When I turned from him to my own corner by the window, the blubber would die away into a snuffle, and there he would sit, his head buried in his hands, snuffling and snuffling until books.

Now I spoke sharply to the boy. He raised his head and fixed one red eye on me, for the other was hidden by his hand.

"I guesst you was never hit on the eye by a ball, was ye?" he stuttered.

"I guess I have been," was my reply. "I was a good round-town player, and you never saw me crying like that, either."

"I was playin' sock-ball," snuffled the boy, and a solitary tear rolled down his snub nose. He flicked it away with his right hand, and this act disclosed to me a great bluish swelling, from under which a bit of eye was twinkling mournfully at me. The boy was hurt; my heart went out to him, for the memory of my own sock-ball and tickley-bender days came back to me.

"Come, come," I said more kindly, laying a hand on the black head. "Brace up, Daniel, for I must call the others in, and you don't want them to see you crying. Dare to be like the great Daniel, who wasn't even afraid of the wild beasts."

"But Dan'el in the Lion's Den never played sock-ball," whimpered the boy, covering each eye with a chubby fist as he rubbed away the traces of his tears.

Beware, Daniel Arker! Form not in my mind such a picture as that of the mighty prophet in his robes being "it." Over the mantel in our parlor we have a picture of the lion's den, and it is one of the choicest of our family treasures. Whence it came, we do not know. Even my mother, familiar as she was with the minutest detail of our family history as far back as my grandfather's time, could not tell me that; but we always believed it to be one of the world's great pictures that by some strange chance had come into our possession. How well I remember my keen disappointment on learning that it was not a photograph. It took years to convince Tim of that, and we consoled ourselves that at least it had been drawn by one who was there. Else how could he have done it so accurately? For the likeness of Daniel was splendid. The great prophet of Babylon must have looked just like that. He must have sat on a boulder in the middle of the rocky chamber, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, one hand resting languidly on the head of a mighty lion, a sandalled foot using another hoary mane as a footstool. There were lions all around him, and how they loved him! You could see it in their eyes. Tip Pulsifer once told me that Daniel had them charmed, and that he was looking so intently at the ceiling because he was repeating over and over again the mystic words—probably Dutch—that his grandfather had taught him. One slip—and I should see the fiery flash return to the eyes of the beasts! One slip—and they would be upon him! To Tip I replied that this was preposterous, as Babylon lived before there was any Dutch, and there being no Dutch, how could there be effective charms? Daniel was saved by a miracle. But Tip is slow-witted. Charms were originally called miracles, he said. The miracle was the father of the charm. Folks would say there were no charms to-day, yet they would believe in charms that were worked a few thousand years ago, only they called them miracles. It was useless to argue with a thick fellow like Tip. I had always preferred to think of Daniel stilling the wild beasts by the grandeur of his soul, and the suggestion that I drag him from his throne, king of men and king of beasts, and picture him playing sock-ball, doing a double shuffle with his sandalled feet, tossing his long robe wildly about, now leaping, now dodging, to avoid the flying sphere—it was too much. It angered me.

"You should be ashamed of yourself, Daniel Arker!" I cried. "The idea of a boy that comes of good church folks like yours talking that way about one of the prophets! I'll dally with you no more. The boys shall see you as you are. It's books!"

I threw the window open and shouted, "Books!" I pounded on the ledge with my ruler and shouted, "Books!"

For a minute the boys feigned not to see me, and played the harder, trying to drown my cries in their yells to the runners on the bases. But the girls took up my call and came trooping schoolward. The little boys began to break away, and soon the school resounded with the shuffle of feet, the clatter of empty dinner pails, and the banging of desk tops.

"It's books, William; hurry," I cried to the last laggard.

I knew this boy well. He was the biggest in the school, and to hold his position among his fellows he had to defy me. As long as I watched him, he must lag. The louder I called, the deafer he must seem to be. His post was hemmed around by tradition. It was his by divine right, and it involved on its holder duties sometimes onerous, often dangerous; but for him to abate one iota of his privileges would be a reflection on his predecessors, an injustice to his heirs. It would mean scholastic revolution. He knew that I must yell at him. My position also was hemmed about by tradition. To appear not to fear the biggest boy was one of the chief duties of a successful pedagogue. We understood each other. So I yelled once more and closed the window. The moment my back was turned he ran for the door.

"It is," Daniel Arker was shouting.

"It ain't," Samuel Carter retorted, sticking out his tongue.

"Boys, be quiet!" I commanded.

"He said his eye was swole worse 'an mine oncet," cried Daniel.

His good eye was blazing, his shoulders were squared back, and his fists were clenched. There was no sign of a snuffle about him now. Heaven, but he looked fine! All this time I had wronged Daniel. I had only known him as he crawled to me broken and bruised after the conflict. I had never known the odds he had encountered, for when I questioned him he just snuffled. Now I saw him before the battle, ready to defend his honor against a lad of more than his years and size, and the wickedest fighter in the school. I believed that had I let him loose there he would have whipped. But one in my position is hemmed in by tradition, so in my private capacity I was patting the boy's head with the same motion that I used in my public capacity to push him into his seat, while with a crutch I made a feint at Samuel that sent him scurrying to his place.

The biggest boy in the school sauntered in. He carefully upset three dinner pails from the shelves in the rear as he hung up his hat. I reprimanded him most severely, but I finished my lecture before he had replaced the cans. Then he shuffled to his place and got out a book as a sign that school might begin.

Now, I always liked that biggest boy. He knew his position so well. He knew just how far it was proper for him to go, and never once did he overstep those bounds. He held the respect and fear of his juniors without making any open breach with the teacher. But in one way William Bellus had been peculiarly favored. His predecessors had to deal with Perry Thomas, and in spite of his gentle ways and intellectual cast, Perry is active and wiry. He is a blacksmith by trade, and is the leading tenor in the Methodist choir. This makes a combination that for staying powers has few equals. My biggest boy's predecessor had been utterly broken. Even the girls jeered at him until he quit school entirely. But William had another problem. It was the disappointment of his life that Perry Thomas retired just as he came into power. He had declared at a mass-meeting behind the woodshed that it was a gross injustice on the part of the directors to put a crippled teacher in charge of the school. Where now was glory to be gained? They would have a school-ma'am next, like they done up to Popolomus, and none but little boys, and girls not yet out of plaits, would be so servile as to suffer such domination. Mark Hope, the soldier, he honored! Mark Hope, the veteran, he revered! Mark Hope, the teacher, he despised; for his crutches made him a safe barricade against which no Biggest Boy with a spark of honor would dare to hurl himself. There might be in the school boys base enough to charge that he lacked spirit in his attitude of armed neutrality. Let those traducers step forward, whether they be two or a dozen. What would follow, the Biggest Boy did not say; but he had pulled off his coat, and there was none to dispute him. His position was established. Thereafter he assumed toward me a calm indifference. He was never openly offensive. He always kept within certain carefully laid bounds of supercilious politeness. At first he was exasperating, and I longed to have him forget himself and overstep those bounds, that I might make up for his disappointment in being cheated out of Perry Thomas. But he never did.

To-day William Bellus really opened the school, for not till he had buried his face in his book did the general buzz begin.

That buzz was maddening. For three long hours I had to sit there and listen to the children as they droned over and over their lessons. Yet this was my life's work. To my care Six Stars had intrusted her young, and I should be proud of that trust and earnest in its fulfilment. But Tim's letter was in my pocket. It was full of the big things of this life. It told of great struggles for great prizes, and the chalk dust choked me when I thought of him, and then turned to myself as I stood there, trying to demonstrate to half a dozen girls and boys that the total sum of a single column of six figures was twenty-four. Tim had been promoted and was a full-fledged clerk now. There were many steps ahead for him, but he was going to climb them rung by rung; and what joy there is in drawing one's self up by one's own strength! I was at the top of my ladder—at the very pinnacle of learning in Black Log. Even now I was unfolding to the marvelling eyes of the children of the valley the mysteries of that great science, physical geography. I was explaining to them the trend of the Rockies and the Himalayas, and of other mountains I should never see; I was telling them why it snowed, and unfolding the phenomena of the aurora borealis. Alexander with no more worlds to conquer was a sorry spectacle. We pedagogues who have mastered physical geography are Alexanders. But if I was bound to the pinnacle of learning so that I could neither fly nor fall, I could at least watch Tim as he struggled higher and higher. And Mary was watching with me! That was what made my work that day seem doubly irksome and the hours trebly long; for she was waiting to hear from him, and when the sun seemed to rest on the mill gable I should be free to go to her. So the minutes dragged. It made me angry. Ordinarily I speak quietly to the scholars, but now I fairly bellowed at Chester Holmes, who was reading in such a loud tone that he disturbed me and called me to the real business of the moment.

"Don't say Dooglas!" I cried.

"That's the way Teacher Thomas used to say it," retorted Chester, sitting down on the long bench where the Fifth Reader class was posted.

"D-o-u-g—dug—Douglas," I snapped.

"'Douglas round him drew his cloak.' Now, Ira Snarkle, you may read five lines, beginning with the second stanza."

Ira was very tall for his sixteen years. His clothes had never caught up to him, for his trousers always failed by two inches to grasp his shoe-tops, and his coat had a terrible struggle to touch the top of his trousers. For the shortness of the sleeves he partly compensated with a pair of bright red worsted wristers. When he bent his elbows the sleeves flew up his arms, and these wristers became the most conspicuous thing in his whole attire.

Ira was holding his book in the correct position now, so I saw a length of bare arms embraced at the wrists by brilliant bands of red.

"'My manors, halls, and bowers shall still be open at my soveryne's will,'" chanted the boy.

He paused, and to illustrate the imperious humor of the Scot, he waved his fingers and a red wrister at me. The gesture unnerved him for a moment, and he had to go thumbing over the page to find his place. He caught it again and chanted on—"'At my sover-sover-yne's will. To each one whom he lists, however unmeet to be the owner's peer.'"

Again the boy waved the fingers and the red wrister at me. Again he paused, gathering himself for the climax. That gesture was abominable, but at such a time I dared not interrupt.

"'My castles are my king's alone from turret to foundation stone,'" he cried. The red wrister flashed beneath my eye. Ira had even forgotten his book and let it fall to his side. He took a step forward; paused with one knee bent and the other stiff; extended his right arm and shouted, "'The hand of Dooglas is his own, and never shall in friendly grasp the hand of sech as Marmyyon clasp.'"

"'At my sover-sover-yne's will.'"[Illustration: "'At my sover-sover-yne's will.'"]

Well done, Ira! The proud Marmion must indeed have trembled until his armor rattled if the Scot bellowed at him in that way and shook a red wrister so violently under his very nose. Excellent, Ira; you put spirit in your reading. One can almost picture you beneath Tantallion's towers, drawing your cloak around you and giving cold respect to the stranger guest. But why say "Dooglas"?

"S-o-u-p spells soup," answered Ira loftily to my question. "Then D-o-u-g must spell doog."

"I tell you it's Douglas. 'The hand of Douglas is his own,'" I cried. At the mention of the doughty Scot I pounded the floor with my crutch and repeated "Dug—dug—dug."

"But Teacher Thomas allus said Doog," exclaimed Chester Holmes.

"I don't care what Teacher Thomas said," I retorted. "You must say Dug—Dug—Douglas."

"But Teacher Thomas is the best speaker they is," piped in Lulu Ann Nummler from the end of the bench.

"I don't care if Teacher Thomas can recite better than Demosthenes himself," I snapped. "In this school we say Douglas." My crutch emphasized this mandate, but I could not see how it was received, for every scholar's face was hidden from me by a book.

"Now, Abraham, six lines."

Abraham Lincoln Spiker was two years younger than Ira Snarkle, but he seemed much taller and correspondingly thinner. In our valley the boys have a fashion of being born long, and getting shorter and fatter as they grow older. Abraham's mother in making his clothes had provided against the day when he would weigh two hundred pounds, and consequently his garments hung all around him, giving him an exceedingly dispirited look. His hair relieved this somewhat, for it was white and always stood gaily on end, defying brush and comb. Daniel Arker, a sturdy black-haired lad, would have done fuller justice to the passage that fell to Abraham, for the Spiker boy with his gentle lisp never shone in elocution; but our reading class is a lottery, as we go from scholar to scholar down the line. The lot falling to him, Abraham pushed himself up from the bench, grasped his book fiercely with both hands, and fixed his eyes intently on the ceiling.

"Go on," I commanded kindly.

"'Fierth broke he forth,'" lisped the boy.

"Louder. Put some spirit in it," I cried. "'Fierce broke he forth!'" And my crutch beat the floor.

"'Fierth broke he forth, and durtht thou then to bared——"

"To beard," I corrected.

"'Bared the lion in hith den—the Doog-dug-lath——'" Abraham stopped and took a long breath. I just gazed at him.

"'In hith hall,'" he shouted. "'And h-o-p-hop-e-s-t-hopest thou then unthscathed to go?'"

The boy's knees began to bend under him, and he was reaching a long, thin arm out behind hunting for the bench. He was fleeing. I knew it. I warned him.

"No—go on—read on."

Abraham sighed and drew his sleeve across his mouth from the elbow to the tips of his fingers. Then he sang:

"'Noby—Thent Bride—ofBoth—wellno—updraw—bridgegrooms—whatward—erho —lettheportculluthfall!'"

Young Spiker collapsed.

"'Lord Marmion turned; well was his need,'" I cried, "if Douglas ever addressed him in that fashion."

"Now watch me, boys," I added. And with as much fire as I could kindle in so short a time and under conditions so dampening, I thundered the resounding lines: "'No, by St. Bride of Bothwell, no! Up drawbridge, grooms—what, warder, ho!'"

"'Let the portcullis fall!'" This last command rang from the back of the room. Perry Thomas stood there smiling.

"I couldn't have done it better myself, Mark," he said. "It's a splendid piece—that Manny-yon—ain't it—grand—noble. I love to say it."

"Teacher Thomas, Teacher Thomas," came in the shrill voice of Chester Holmes, "ain't it Dooglas?"

Perry was at my side, smiling benignly on the school. He really seemed to love the scholars; but Perry is a pious man, and seeks to follow the letter of the Scriptures, and the command is to love our enemies.

"Doogulus—Doogulus," he said. "Of course, boys, it's Doogulus."

The word seemed to taste good, he rolled it over and over so in his mouth.

"Teacher Hope says you ain't such a fine speaker after all," cried Lulu Ann Nummler from the distant end of the bench.

She is fifteen and should have known better, but the people of our valley are dreadfully frank sometimes, and this girl spoke in the clear, sharp voice of truth that cut through one. Perry turned quick as a flash and eyed me.

For a moment all I could do was to thump the floor and cry "Order! Silence! Lulu Ann Nummler, when you want to speak, you must hold up three fingers."

The three fingers shot up at once and waved at me, but I pretended not to see them and turned to my guest.

"I said, Perry, that you were not quite so great a speaker as Demosthenes," I stammered. Chester Holmes had three fingers up and Ira Snarkle was waving both hands, but I went calmly on: "They were telling me how beautifully you recited, and I was trying to instil into the piece a little of your spirit. But now that we have you here, I insist on your showing me and the school just how it is done."

Perry frowned fiercely on Lulu Ann Nummler, and the three fingers disappeared. On me he smiled.

"It's a great pleasure to me to be able to recite," he said. "To be able to repeat great po-ems at will, is to have a treasure you can allus carry with you while your voice lasts." All this was to the scholars. "There are three great arts in this world—singin', hand-paintin', and last but not least, speakin'. I try my hand at all of them except hand-paintin', and I wish to impress on all you scholars what a joy it is to oneself and one's friends to have mastered one of these muses. Singin' and speakin' are closely allied, startin' from the same source. And hand-painting it allus seemed to me, is really elocution in oils; for a be-yutiful picture is a silent talker. What suggestions it brings to us as we look upon a paintin' of a wreath of flowers, or fruit, or a handsome lady! This art is lastin'. Speakin' and singin' is over as soon as they is done. So I have often thought that had I only time I'd hand-paint; but bein' a busy man I've had to content myself with but two of the muses."

Perry paused a moment to rub his hands and smile. I did not miss this opportunity to break in, for I had no intention of listening to a dissertation on art as well as to a recitation.

"Now let us have your 'Marmion,'" I said.

He had forgotten all about "Marmion," and came back to the knight with a start and a cough. Then he gazed long at the floor. The school buzz died away, and you could hear the ticking of my little clock. Perry coughed again and I knew that he was started, so I settled down in my chair and gazed out of the window.

"'But Doogulus round him drew his cloak,'" Perry was buttoning the two top buttons of his Prince Albert as his voice rang out. "'Folded his arms and thus he spoke.'"

Annagretta Holmes is only three years old. They send her to school to keep her warm and out of mischief. She sat on the very front row, right under Perry's eye. The poor child didn't understand why Teacher Thomas should stare so at her, and she let out one long, unending bleat. This gave me a chance to send Lulu Ann Nummler out of the room in charge of the infant, and I rested easier when Perry drew his Prince Albert around him once more and spoke.

A grand figure Perry would have made in Tantallion's towers. I forgot the school, and the village and the valley, as I sat there looking out of the window into the sky. I am in those towers when Marmion stops to bid adieu, but in place of the proud Scottish noble, Perry Thomas stands confronting the English warrior. What a pair they make—the knight armed cap-a-pie, at his charger's side, and Perry in that close-fitting, shiny coat that has seen so many great occasions in the valley. There is a gracious bigness about the Englishman forgetting the cold respect with which he has been treated and offering a mailed hand in farewell. But Perry buttons his Prince Albert, waves his brown derby under the very vizor of the departing guest, rests easily on his right leg, bends the left knee slightly, folds his arms and speaks. "Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire." Little wonder! If Perry Thomas spoke to me like that I'd cleave his head. But Marmion spares proud Angus. He beards the Doogulus in his hall. He dashes the rowels in his steed, dodges the portcullis, and gallops over the draw. And Perry Thomas is left standing with folded arms, gazing through the chalk-dust haze into the solemn, wide open eyes of the children of Six Stars.

Perry Thomas stands confronting the English warrior.[Illustration: Perry Thomas stands confronting the English warrior.]

Perry's head was close to mine, over my table. The school was studying louder than ever, and our voices could not have gone beyond the platform; but my friend was cautious. The scholars might well have thought that the whispered conference boded them ill; that the new teacher and the old teacher were hatching some conspiracy against them. It must have looked like it. Perry's elbows were on the table, and my elbows were on the table. My chin rested in my hands, but his hands were waving beneath my chin as he unfolded to me the plot he had just discovered against his hopes and his happiness. But the school was good. The second grammar class had been relieved from a recitation by this confab, and somehow Perry had a subduing influence. Even the Biggest Boy opened his desk quietly and never once looked up from his geography except for a cautious glance out of the corner of his left eye.

"There was a pile of 'em that high, Mark," said Perry, waving his hands about a foot above the table. "There was some books of po-ems and novels and such. He'd sent them all to her in one batch—all new, mind ye, too—and it pleased her most to death. Well, it made me feel flat, I tell you—so flat that when she asked me if I didn't think it was lovely of him, I burst right out and said it was really. What I should 'a' done was kind of pass it off as if it didn't amount to much."

"Who is the young woman?" I asked.

"I ain't mentionin' names," Perry replied, "and I ain't givin' the name of the other man; but I have an idee you could guess if you kep' at it."

Our valley does not bloom with beautiful young women. We always have a few, but those few can be counted on one's fingers. Our valley does not number among its men many who can supplement their sentimental attentions with gifts of books. I knew of one. So it did not require much guessing on my part to divine the cause of Perry's heart-sickness; but as long as the other persons in his drama were anonymities, he would speak freely, so I relieved him by declaring solemnly that never in the world could I guess. I had always supposed him a lover of all women, a slave of none.

Perry smiled.

"I have kep' a good deal of company," he said. "On account of my fiddlin', and singin', and recitin' I've always had things pretty much my own way. It's opposition that's ruination. That's what shatters a man's heart and takes all his sperrit. As long as the game's between just a man and a girl there's nothin' very serious. One or the other loses, and you can begin a new game somewheres else. But when two men and one girl get a playin' three handed, then it is serious; then it's desperate. A man has to th'ow his whole heart and mind into it, if he'd whip, and he gets so worked up he thinks his whole happiness to the end of time depends on his drivin' the other fellow to drownin' himself in the mill-dam."

"In other words, if you had not found another laying piles of books and such gifts at the feet of this fair one, whose name I can never guess, you would have fiddled to her and sung to her and recited to her until she said 'I love you.' Then you would have sought new heavens to conquer."

"That's about it," said Perry, smiling feebly. His face brightened. "You know how it is yourself, Mark. Mind how you kep' company once with Emily Holmes and nothin' come of it. She went off to normal school in desperation—you mind that, don't ye?—and she married a school-teacher from Snyder County—you mind that, don't ye? Now supposin' you and that Snyder County chap had been opposin' one another instead of you and Emily Holmes—I allow her name would have been changed to Emily Hope long ago, or you'd 'a' drownded yourself."

"But I never had any intention of marrying Emily Holmes," I protested.

"I know you didn't," Perry replied, thumping the table in triumph. "That's just the pint. If the world was popilated by one man and one woman, they'd be a bachelor and an old maid. If there was two men and one woman, then one of the men would marry the old maid sure."

"Your meaning is more clear," I said.

Though Perry did not know it, I was meeting the same opposition that so aroused his ire. In part there was truth in what he said, for while opposition does not increase one's love, it surely quickens it. I doubt if I should have been making a journey nightly up the hill if I had not expected to find Weston there. Of Perry I had no fear, and it was not egotism in me to be indifferent to him. He lives so far down the valley. It's a long walk from Buzzards Glory to Six Stars, and the road has many chuck-holes. Perry is our man-about-the-valleypar excellence, but he is discreet, so it had chanced we met but once at Warden's, and that was on the night when we heard the story of Flora Martin and the famine in India. He knew me still as a friend, and not regarding him as a rival, I treated him as a companion in arms. To be sure, I could not see where he could be of much assistance; but we had a common aim and a common foe. That made a bond between us. With that common foe disposed of, the bond might snap. Till then I was Perry's friend.

"I agree with you partly," I said. "Still, it seems to me a man should love a woman for herself—wholly, entirely for herself, and not because some other fellow has set his heart on her."

"You are right there, in part," Perry answered. "I have set my heart on a particular young lady, but the fact that another—a lean, cadaverous fellow with red whiskers and no particular looks or brains—is slowly pushing himself between us makes it worse. It aggravates me; it affects my appetite." Perry smiled grimly. "It drives away sleep. You know how it 'ud have been if that Snyder County teacher had been livin' in Six Stars when you was keepin' company with Emily Holmes."

"I don't know how it would have been at all," I retorted hotly.

"Well, s'posin' when you'd walked four miles to set up with her, and thought you had her all to yourself, s'pose this Snyder County teacher with red whiskers, and little twinklin' eyes, and new clothes, come strollin' in, and stretched out in a chair like he owned her, and begin tellin' about all the countries he'd seen—about England and Rome, Injy and Africa—and she leaned for'a'd and looked up into his eyes and just listened to him talk, drank it all in like—s'pose all that, and then s'pose——"

"I'll suppose anything you like," said I, "except that I am in love with Emily Holmes and that the Snyder County teacher is cutting me out. For example, let us put me in your place. I am enamored of this fair unknown—of course I can't guess her name—and this second man, also unknown—he of the red whiskers, is my rival. Let us suppose it that way."

"If you insist," Perry replied. "Well then, you are settin' up with her. You've invited her to be your lady at the next spellin' bee between Six Stars and Turkey Walley, and she has said she'll think about it. Then you've told her that there is something wrong with you. You don't know what it is, 'ceptin' you feel all peekit like for no special reason; you can't eat no more, and sleep poorly and has sighin' spells. Then she kind of peeks at you outen the corner of her eye and smiles. S'posin' just then in comes this man and bows most polite, and tells you he is so delighted to see you, and makes her move from the settee where you are, to a rocker close to him; and leans over her and asks about the health of all the family as if they was his nearest and dearest; inquires about her dog; tells her she looks just like the portrates of his great-grandma. S'posin' she just kind of looks at the floor quiet-like or else up to him—you'll begin to think you ain't there at all, won't you? Then you'll concide that you are there but you oughtn't to be, and kind of slide out without your hat and forget your fiddle. I tell you, Mark, it's then love becomes a consumin' fire."

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