A few moments later he snapped his hitch-weight into his horse’s bridle and followed the angry woman into the dusty entry-way of the little school house.
Esther tore at the knob of the inner door and threw it open.
Squire Phin sat in the little teacher’s chair. The little teacher was huddled on the floor at his feet, her head on his knee. He was stroking a shoulder that was quivering with sobs.
At the woman’s first explosion the lawyer arose and put his arm around the teacher and led her toward the door.
“I will talk with you when you are in your right mind, Esther,” he said. “But this poor child has suffered enough from your tongue. Isn’t there one streak of womanhood left in you?” He put out his arm and gently pushed her from their path, leading the schoolma’am toward the door.
“A pretty spectacle of a man you are, Bradish,” he gritted. “You’re trampling on a poor girl to strike a coward’s blow at me.”
His face was gray with passion and his brows knotted above flaming eyes. He shouldered against the other and crowded him back into the entry-way and to one side. Bradish had his whip.
“If it wasn’t for the presence of the ladies here, Look,” he cried, “I’d lace you till you howled.”
“Bradish,” replied the Squire, “you’re hiding behind women now, like the cur that you are, and you have been hiding behind a woman for a good many years. Some day—but I’m a fool to stoop to your level. Come, child.”
He strode away across the yard, the little teacher in the hook of his arm.