red in.

With her back to the blackboard and her arms rigid against her sides,
altogether in an attitude of one at bay, stood a girl. He first noticed
that her hands were tightly clenched, and then his look went upward.
Streaming through the window the same golden rays that burnished the
weatherboards and flag-pole touched the looser strands of her hair.
This, against the background of black, framed her upraised face with a
halo of lustrous glory, softening the parted lips rather than showing
them to be stamped with fear, but not disguising the terror which leapt
from her eyes as they stared, fairly hypnotized, at an ungainly man who
stood leering down at her. His head was set deep between massive,
stooping shoulders, and his arms were abnormally long, while the color
of his face indicated a diet, at some period of his life, of clay and
berries. Two fang-like teeth, curving outward as the tusks of a wild
boar--having furnished inspiration for the name by which he was most
popularly known--added a last fierce touch to his repulsive features.

"Go home," the girl repeated, now in a weaker voice.

"It ain't time to go home," he growled. "When kids don't know their
lessons you make 'em stay in, don't you? Well, I'm a-stayin', too!"

"Let me by this instant," she commanded, plucking another crumb of
courage from the sheer imminence of danger.

"Aw, come off yoh high airs," he leered. "Ain't you been standin' me up
afore the school an' actin' me like a fool? I ain't kicked, have I?
Well, what you want to go cuttin' up for now?"

Brains partly numbed, or over-excited by shock, sometimes take queer and
irrelevant channels of thought, and now the only thing on which she
seemed able to concentrate was a duel she had witnessed on that very
schoolhouse window sill but the previous day: a duel between a locust
and a wasp. They had fallen there in deadly embrace, the clumsier
holding his antagonist by brute strength that ultimately would break its
frail body; but the wily wasp, conscious of this danger, sent thrust
after thrust of its venomous stinger with lightning stabs up and down
its enemy's armor, trusting to chance that a vulnerable spot might be
found between the scales. She had watched this struggle with a
breathless pleasure--for at times she could be pagan as of old--and when
at last the little point slipped through, she felt no pity for the
locust; rather, was she tempted to stroke the victor as it crawled from
the s