“I am not going to talk to you two boys until to-morrow,” said Miss Mary firmly, “and then I'm going to put a stop to all this. I want both of you to be here when school closes. I want you too, Pleasant, and I want you to bring Lum Chapman.”
Pleasant Trouble was as bewildered as the two shamefaced boys—did she mean to have him hold a gun on the two boys while Lum, the blacksmith, whaled them?
“Me?—Lum?—why, whut——”
“Never mind—wait till to-morrow. Will you all be here?”
“Yes'm,” said all.
“Go with them up the river, Pleasant. Don't let them quarrel, and see that each one goes up his own creek.”
The two boys moved away like yoked oxen. At the bottom step Pleasant turned to look back. Very rigid and straight the little teacher stood under the lantern, and the pallor and distress of her face had given way to a look of stern determination.
“Whew!” he breathed, and he turned a half-circle on his crutch into the dark.
III
Miss Mary Holden was a daughter of the Old Dominion, on the other side of the Cumberland Range, and she came, of course, from fighting stock. She had gone North to school and had come home horrified by—to put it mildly—the Southern tendency to an occasional homicide. There had been a great change, to be sure, within her young lifetime. Except under circumstances that were peculiarly aggravating, gentlemen no longer peppered each other on sight. The duel was quite gone. Indeed, the last one at the old university was in her father's time, and had been, he told her, a fake. A Texan had challenged another student, and the seconds had loaded the pistols with blank cartridges. After firing three times at his enemy the Texan threw his weapon down, swore that he could hit a quarter every time at that distance, pulled forth two guns of his own and demanded that they be used; and they had a terrible time appeasing the Westerner, who, failing in humor, challenged then and there every member of his enemy's fraternity and every member of his own. Thereafter it became the custom there and at other institutions of learning in the State to settle all disputes fist and skull; and of this Miss Holden, who was no pacifist, thoroughly approved. Now she was in a community where the tendency to kill seemed well-nigh universal. St. Hilda was a gentle soul, who would never even whip a pupil. She might not approve—but Miss Holden had the spirit of the pioneer and she must lead these people into the light. So she told her plan next day to Pleasant Trouble and Lum Chapman, who were first to come. Stolid Lum would have shown no surprise had she proposed that the two boys dive from a cliff, and if one survived he won; but the wonder and the succeeding joy in Pleasant's face disturbed Miss Holden. And when Pleasant swung his hat from his head and let out a fox-hunting yelp of pure ecstasy she rebuked him severely, whereat the man with the crutch lapsed into solemnity.