minded Tusk would stop their going.
His dwarfed intelligence, gauged to one idea, might be satisfied to wait
only if waiting promised a climax. And as for the other's
returning--this new-found deliverer who was so thoroughly of the
mountains, yet whose dialect just now had savored of the "circuit-rider"
type--she felt able to cope with that exigency after they were outside.
So in her eagerness she had arisen, when Tusk stepped roughly to the
door and slammed it.

"Nobody's goin' home to-night," he growled, turning and glaring at them.

His eyes, set unusually deep and close together, flashed murder, and the
girl sank weakly back into a seat. For she knew Tusk's strength. She had
seen him shoulder a log under which two men were struggling and walk
firmly away with it. The very consciousness alone of this power was
oppressive. He could crush this other man with a blow.

"A soft answer turneth away wrath," a quiet voice whispered down to her,
and continued: "Let the gal out; she wants ter go home!"

"If you're some kind of a preacher," Tusk snarled at him, having also
noticed the Biblical character of speech, "git out yohse'f. But the gal
stays right heah till I'm ready fer her to go! An', young feller, mebbe
she'll be let go home, or mebbe she'll come 'long with me--I ain't
decided, but I won't be hindered by no one!" His voice was trembling
with increasing passion. "Now's yoh time to git, Mister Preacher, or, by
Gawd--" He drew a long, dirty knife from a hidden sheath, and seemed
unable to complete the sentence for his excited breathing.

"I hain't a preacher," the other quietly replied to him, "but I've jest
been sendin' a message ter the Lawd this very evenin', 'n' I reckon He
had me come in heah ter look ye over, bein' as how ye air one of them
sorry skunks I'm arter." And without warning he sprang like a panther at
the offender's throat.

The shock of his body sent Tusk backwards, tripping him over a desk
where both men went down in a heap. Almost before they struck the floor
the newcomer cried to her:

"Git the critter 'n' ride, Schoolteacher! Hit's yo' only chance!"

He had no more time to warn, for a series of sounds, sickening, bestial
sounds, told of a terrific struggle as feet and bodies and elbows dully
crashed against the desks on either side. It was a narrow aisle in which
to fight.

Yet she was not made of the stuff that would mount a horse and fly. Her
early life, when as a slip of a girl she sto