Miner, having been previously chosen as spokesman, now advanced toward this door and said: "Ahem!" He was feeling it a different thing to plan to bully a fellow-man by force of numbers and another to make so ugly a statement to his face, while Ambrose in even deeper embarrassment flattened his thin body against the front wall of the cabin until it suggested a tall plank left to rest there over night.
"You got to git away from our district school-house to-night," blurted Miner at last; "Pennyroyal kin take care of its own coloured children 'thout help from the outside. But you needn't be scairt, for nobody's goin' to hurt you if you go peaceable, but there's a horse waitin' fer you out here and we'll 'low you fifteen minutes to clear out."
Then the little man jumped a few steps backward and the hand of each of his companions slipped toward the trigger of his gun. However, whatever of danger the past moment seemed to have had, it passed swiftly, for the weapon, held by the lonely figure in the doorway, dropped to the ground with a peculiar clatter, and an instant later the voice said:
"There aren't men enough in Kentucky to make me run away like a thief; if I am made to go it must be by force." The tones were low and tremulous, but were sufficiently clear and held no hint of surrender. Then, putting out both hands like a child at play in blind man's buff, the figure groped its way forth from the cabin, moving directly toward Miner and saying: "How can I talk with you, though, when I can't see you? Till to-night I never dreamed a Kentuckian would be ashamed to show his face."
Actually Miner's hand shook as he tore off his mask, for the figure approaching him was that of a woman, possibly a girl, and she must have been preparing for bed at the time the men arrived, for her hair was hanging over her shoulders, and through the opening of her wrapper there showed the white glimmer of a gown.
Even in the midst of his own shame and chagrin Ambrose inwardly chuckled, seeing that for the first time in his life Miner had to discuss a question with a woman without his primeval conviction that man was ordained to be always in the right and woman in the wrong.
"Madam, there has been some mistake; surely you can see that——" he began pompously. But the girl shook her head. "I told you I couldn't see anything."
Something of relief hid in Ambrose's grin this time, for if the Yankee school teacher had a sense of humour even the situation in which he and his companions found themselves was not utterly hopeless.
But an impatient voice now spoke from the crowd. "Oh, fer the love of heaven, can't you understand we didn't know you was a woman? Reckon we'd all 'a' come shyin' out here to drive a woman away? You pack up your duds in the mornin' and leave comfortable, and no more said."
"I won't," came the defiant answer. Then changing her tactics, the girl drew nearer Miner, and putting out one hand almost touched his coat sleeve, although actually he seemed to shrivel away under it. "Do let me stay, at least for a while," she pleaded. "My father was killed in the war; I have to make my own living and this is my first chance. I didn't know you would mind so much. And, please, I am not so very Yankee—Indiana is only just across the river."