old embarrassed fashion.

"What's that you were sayin' o' Cressy?" he said huskily.

"Wot everybody says," said the frightened Seth, gaining a cowardly
confidence under his adversary's emotion. "Wot every cub that sets yer
under his cantin' teachin', and sees 'em together, knows. It's wot you'd
hev knowed ef he and Roop Filgee hadn't played ye fer a softy all the
time. And while you've bin hangin' round yer fer a flicker of Cressy's
gownd as she prances out o' school, he's bin lyin' low and laffin' at
ye, and while he's turned Roop over to keep you here, pretendin' to give
ye lessons, he's bin gallivantin' round with her and huggin' and kissin'
her in barns and in the brush--and now YOU want to quar'll with me."

He stopped, panting for breath, and stared malignantly in the gray face
of his hearer. But Uncle Ben only lifted his heavy hand mildly with
an awkward gesture of warning, stepped softly in his old cautious
hesitating manner to the open door, closed it, and returned gently:--

"I reckon ye got in through the winder, didn't ye, Seth?" he said, with
a labored affectation of unemotional ease, "a kind o' one leg over, and
one, two, and then you're in, eh?"

"Never you mind HOW I got in, Ben Dabney," returned Seth, his hostility
and insolence increasing with his opponent's evident weakness, "ez long
ez I got yer and got, by G-d! what I kem here fer! For whiles all
this was goin' on, and whiles the old fool man and old fool woman was
swallowin' what they did see and blinkin' at what they didn't, and
huggin' themselves that they'd got high-toned kempany fer their darter,
that high-toned kempany was playin' THEM too, by G-d! Yes, Sir! that
high-toned, cantin' school-teacher was keepin' a married woman in
'Frisco, all the while he was here honey-foglin' with Cressy, and I've
got the papers yer to prove it." He tapped his breast-pocket with a
coarse laugh and thrust his face forward into the gray shadow of his
adversary's.

"An' you sorter spotted their bein' in this yer desk and bursted it?"
said Uncle Ben, gravely examining the broken lock in the darkness as if
it were the most important feature of the incident.

Seth nodded. "You bet your life. I saw him through the winder only this
afternoon lookin over 'em alone, and I reckoned to lay my hands on 'em
if I had to bust him or his desk. And I did!" he added with a triumphant
chuckle.

"And you did--sure pop!" said Uncle Ben with slow deliberate admiration,
pass