imself to undo the mischief, hoping perhaps to melt her yet to
take the all-day drive with him. But she sat silent during the return to
the village, answering his volubility only by yes or no when absolutely
necessary. She let him babble away about college life and tell incidents
of his late pastorate, at some of which he laughed immoderately; but he
could not even bring a smile to her dignified lips.

He hoped she would change her mind when they got to the school building,
and he even stooped to praise it in a kind of contemptuous way as they
drew up in front of the large adobe building.

"I suppose you will want to go through the building," he said, affably,
producing the key from his pocket and putting on a pleasant anticipatory
smile, but Margaret shook her head. She simply would not go into the
building with that man.

"It is not necessary," she said again, coldly. "I think I will go home
now, please." And he was forced to turn the horse toward the Tanner
house, crestfallen, and wonder why this beautiful girl was so extremely
hard to win. He flattered himself that he had always been able to
interest any girl he chose. It was really quite a bewildering type. But
he would win her yet.

He set her down silently at the Tanner door and drove off, lunch-basket
and all, into the wilderness, vexed that she was so stubbornly
unfriendly, and pondering how he might break down the dignity wherewith
she had surrounded herself. There would be a way and he would find it.
There was a stubbornness about that weak chin of his, when one observed
it, and an ugliness in his pale-blue eye; or perhaps you would call it a
hardness.

CHAPTER IX

She watched him furtively from her bedroom window, whither she had fled
from Mrs. Tanner's exclamations. He wore his stylish derby tilted down
over his left eye and slightly to one side in a most unministerial
manner, showing too much of his straw-colored back hair, which rose in a
cowlick at the point of contact with the hat, and he looked a small,
mean creature as he drove off into the vast beauty of the plain.
Margaret, in her indignation, could not help comparing him with the
young man who had ridden away from the house two days before.

And he to set up to be a minister of Christ's gospel and talk like that
about the Bible and Christ! Oh, what was the church of Christ coming to,
to have ministers like that? How ever did he get into the ministry,
anyway? Of course, she knew ther