ys couldn't have matched up all the animals
and insects in the time they was allowed, let alone stabling 'em in a
building three hundred cupids long and thirty cupids wide and three
stories high. Now I allus held----"

"I don't care what you held," said the Professor sharply. "You can't
get me into an argument now. I suppose it was unwise of me to try to
make you people think, but you can't arrest a man for simply being
unpopular. This is my home, and no law of your twopenny village can
make me leave it."

"I'm not going to argue about Noah," protested Stacy Shunk. "As your
friend, I'm trying----"

"As my friend, you had best go home and take your other friends with
you." The Professor's voice was dry and crackling.

He reached behind the door and took up the long rifle which leaned
against the wall. There was no threat in his action, for he held it
under his arm and looked off to the mountain-top as though he were
trying to make up his mind whether or not it was a good day for
hunting. Stacy Shunk saw another purpose beneath this careless air,
and he abandoned argument. Without heeding the briers, he fled to his
friends; he did not even stop there, but plunged into the bushes, and
above them I saw his head and hands moving together in an excited
colloquy. The ludicrous figure which he cut in his retreat excited the
Professor to laughter, in which Penelope joined, clapping her hands
with mirth. I, wiser than she as to the danger of firearms, and
trusting less to her father's mild intentions, broke into tearful
pleading.

"Please don't shoot, Professor," I whimpered, tugging at his coat-tails
to drag him back. "They won't hurt you, I know they won't."

"Don't worry, Davy," the Professor said with a reassuring smile. "They
wouldn't hurt any one, nor would I. Didn't Shunk run at the mere sight
of a gun? Why, if I pointed it at the rest of them they would fly like
birds."

It was not fair to judge the courage of the others by the cowardice of
Stacy Shunk. The constable's boasts came out of the past to goad him
into action, and while Joe Holmes, the blacksmith, might have been very
weak in the knees, he was not ready to retreat so early in the action
when his helper, Thaddeus Miller, was watching him. As for James,
despite the fall his moral qualities had taken in my estimation, I
believed him to be a man of unflinching bravery, and he it was that I
feared most when at last the advance began across