Shall I
accompany you?" As McKinstry waived the suggestion with a gesture, he
added lightly, as if to conclude the interview, "I'll report progress to
you from time to time, if you like."

"To ME," emphasized McKinstry; "not over THAR," indicating the ranch.
"But p'rhaps you wouldn't mind my ridin' by and lookin' in at the
school-room winder onct in a while? Ah--you WOULD," he added, with the
first deepening of color he had shown. "Well, never mind."

"You see it might distract the children from their lessons," explained
the master gently, who had however contemplated with some concern the
infinite delight which a glimpse of McKinstry's fiery and fatuous face
at the window would awaken in Johnny Filgee's infant breast.

"Well, no matter!" returned McKinstry slowly. "Ye don't keer, I s'pose,
to come over to the hotel and take suthin'? A julep or a smash?"

"I shouldn't think of keeping you a moment longer from Mrs. McKinstry,"
said the master, looking at his companion's wounded hand. "Thank you all
the same. Good-by."

They shook hands, McKinstry transferring his rifle to the hollow of his
elbow to offer his unwounded left. The master watched him slowly resume
his way towards the ranch. Then with a half uneasy and half pleasurable
sense that he had taken some step whose consequences were more important
than he would at present understand, he turned in the opposite direction
to the school-house. He was so preoccupied that it was not until he had
nearly reached it that he remembered Uncle Ben. With an odd recollection
of McKinstry's previous performance, he approached the school from the
thicket in the rear and slipped noiselessly to the open window with the
intention of looking in. But the school-house, far from exhibiting that
"kam" and studious abstraction which had so touched the savage breast
of McKinstry, was filled with the accents of youthful and unrestrained
vituperation. The voice of Rupert Filgee came sharply to the master's
astonished ears.

"You needn't try to play off Dobell or Mitchell on ME--you hear! Much
YOU know of either, don't you? Look at that copy. If Johnny couldn't do
better than that, I'd lick him. Of course it's the pen--it ain't your
stodgy fingers--oh, no! P'r'aps you'd like to hev a few more boxes
o' quills and gold pens and Gillott's best thrown in, for two bits a
lesson? I tell you what! I'll throw up the contract in another minit!
There goes another quill busted! Look here, what YOU w