“Brayvo, Johnny Walker!”
Twing's face became suddenly white as a Pierrot mask. There was a dead silence, in which the voice continued, “Give us 'Sugar in the Gourd,' Johnny.”
A few hisses, and cries of “Hush!” “Put him out!” followed. Mrs. Martin raised her eyes quickly to where her assistant had stood bowing his thanks a moment before. He was gone!
More concerned than she cared to confess, vaguely fearful that she was in some way connected with his abrupt withdrawal, and perhaps a little remorseful that she had allowed her personal feelings to interfere with her frank recognition of his triumph, she turned back to the schoolroom, after the little performers and their audience had departed, in the hope that he might return. It was getting late, the nearly level rays of the sun were lying on the empty benches at the lower end of the room, but the desk where she sat with its lid raised was in deep shadow. Suddenly she heard his voice in a rear hall, but it was accompanied by another's,—the same voice which had interrupted the applause. Before she could either withdraw, or make herself known, the two men had entered the room, and were passing slowly through it. She understood at once that Twing had slipped out into a janitor's room in the rear, where he had evidently forced an interview and explanation from his interrupter, and now had been waiting for the audience to disperse before emerging by the front door. They had evidently overlooked her in the shadow.
“But,” said the stranger, as if following an aggrieved line of apology, “if Barstow knew who you were, and what you'd done, and still thought you good enough to rastle round here and square up them Pike County fellers and them kids—what in thunder do you care if the others DO find you out, as long as Barstow sticks to you?”
“I've told you why, Dick,” returned Twing gloomily.
“Oh, the schoolma'am!”
“Yes, she's a saint, an angel. More than that—she's a lady, Dick, to the tip of her fingers, who knows nothing of the world outside a parson's study. She took me on trust—without a word—when the trustees hung back and stared. She's never asked me about myself, and now when she knows who and what I have been—she'll loathe me!”
“But look here, Jim,” said the stranger anxiously. “I'll say it's all a lie. I'll come here and apologize to you afore HER, and say I took you for somebody else. I'll”—
“It's too late,” said Twing moodily.