Kentuckians, however, have not the grace of easy forgiveness, and also
have a fixed determination to attend to their own affairs. To-night's
expedition meant that the teacher sent from the North into the
Pennyroyal district to instruct their coloured children must go. Not
that Pennyroyal wished her negroes to remain untaught, "seein'," as
Ambrose had said, "that readin' and writin' ought to belong to them same
as seein' and smellin'," but because they preferred to have time to
attend to the matter themselves. Also, the new teacher had been secretly
hurried into the county that day, driven through the adjoining town, and
finally installed in the Pennyroyal district schoolhouse without
Pennyroyal's being allowed a chance to take even a look.

This schoolhouse was an old-fashioned log cabin set in the middle of a
clearing in a young papaw grove, and to-night, with a light burning in
the front room, the oncoming men could see through a half-opened window
the shadow of a figure.

Without waiting for word of command, silently they got down from their
horses, forming a line about the house, and then one man, pounding
savagely on the closed door, shouted: "Come out from there or we'll drag
you out."

There was no answer at first, and when a candle appeared at the opening
of the door the wind blew it out so quickly that the person holding it
remained in indistinct outline.

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, a