rched Half-past Full, and stumbled into the room. His boot caught,
and he pitched, but saved himself and stood swaying, heavily looking at
Drake. The hair curled dense over his bull head, his mustache was spread
with his grin, the light of cloddish humor and destruction burned in his
big eye. The clay had buried the spirit like a caving pit.

"Twas false jewelry all right!" he roared, at the top of his voice. "A
good old jimmyjohn full, boss. Say, boss, goin' to run our jimmyjohn off
the ranch? Try it on, kid. Come over and try it on!" The bull beat on
the table.

Dean Drake had sat quickly down in his chair, his gray eye upon the
hulking buccaroo. Small and dauntless he sat, a sparrow-hawk caught in a
trap, and game to the end--whatever end.

"It's a trifle tardy to outline any policy about your demijohn," said
he, seriously. "You folks had better come in and eat before you're
beyond appreciating."

"Ho, we'll eat your grub, boss. Sam's cooking goes." The buccaroo
lurched out and away to the bunk-house, where new bellowing was set up.

"I've got to carve this turkey, friend," said the boy to Bolles.

"I'll do my best to help eat it," returned the school-master, smiling.

"Misser Dlake," said poor Sam, "I solly you. I velly solly you."

IV

"Reserve your sorrow, Sam," said Dean Drake. "Give us your soup for a
starter. Come," he said to Bolles. "Quick."

He went into the dining-room, prompt in his seat at the head of the
table, with the school-master next to him.

"Nice man, Uncle Pasco," he continued. "But his time is not now. We have
nothing to do for the present but sit like every day and act perfectly
natural."

"I have known simpler tasks," said Mr. Bolles, "but I'll begin by
spreading this excellently clean napkin."

"You're no schoolmarm!" exclaimed Drake; "you please me."

"The worst of a bad thing," said the mild Bolles, "is having time to
think about it, and we have been spared that."

"Here they come," said Drake.

They did come. But Drake's alert strategy served the end he had tried
for. The drunken buccaroos swarmed disorderly to the door and halted.
Once more the new superintendent's ways took them aback. Here was the
decent table with lights serenely burning, with unwonted good things
arranged upon it--the olives, the oranges, the preserves. Neat as parade
drill were the men's places, all the cups and forks symmetrical along
the white cloth. There, waiting his guests at the far end, sa