Boyle's eye had now just a little gleam of triumphant malice. Raften seemed actually disappointed [246] not to have found some roguery.
"Well, they're a shcaly lot, anyhow. They'll bear watchin'," he added, in tones of self-justification.
"Now, Yahn, last year the township was assessed at $265,000 an' we raised $265 with a school-tax of wan mill on the dollar. This year the new assessment gives $291,400; how much will the same tax raise if cost of collecting is same?"
"Two hundred and ninety-one dollars and forty cents," said Yan, without hesitation—and the three men sat back in their chairs and gasped.
It was the triumph of his life. Even old Boyle beamed in admiration, and Raften glowed, feeling that not a little of it belonged to him.
There was something positively pathetic in the simplicity of the three shrewd men and their abject reverence for the wonderful scholarship of this raw boy, and not less touching was their absolute faith in his infallibility as a mathematician.
Raften grinned at him in a peculiar, almost a weak way. Yan had never seen that expression on his face before, excepting once, and that was as he shook hands with a noted pugilist just after he had won a memorable fight. Yan did not know whether he liked it or not.
On the road home Raften talked with unusual freeness about his plans for his son. (Yan began to realize that the storm had blown over.) He harped on his favourite theme, "eddication." If Yan had only known, that was the one word of comfort that [247] Raften found when he saw his big boy go down: "It's eddication done it. Oh, but he's fine eddicated." Yan never knew until years afterward, when a grown man and he and Raften were talking of the old days, that he had been for some time winning respect from the rough-and-ready farmer, but what finally raised him to glorious eminence was the hip-throw that he served that day on Sam.
Raften was all right, Yan believed, but what of Sam? They had not spoken yet. Yan wished to make up, but it grew harder. Sam had got over his wrath and wanted a chance, but did not know how.