s elder brother, rising with family concern and
frowning openly upon Johnny; "it's jest his foolishness; he oughter be
licked." Finding himself unexpectedly on his feet, and apparently at the
end of a long speech, he colored also, and then said hurriedly, "Jimmy
Snyder--HE seed suthin'. Ask HIM!" and sat down--a recognized hero.

Every eye, including the master's, was turned on Jimmy Snyder. But that
youthful observer, instantly diving his head and shoulders into his
desk, remained there gurgling as if under water. Two or three nearest
him endeavored with some struggling to bring him to an intelligible
surface again. The master waited patiently. Johnny Filgee took advantage
of the diversion to begin again in a high key, "Tige ith got thix," and
subsided.

"Come, Jimmy," said the master, with a touch of peremptoriness. Thus
adjured, Jimmy Snyder came up glowingly, and bristling with full stops
and exclamation points. "Seed a black b'ar comin' outer Daves' woods,"
he said excitedly. "Nigh to me ez you be. 'N big ez a hoss; 'n snarlin'!
'n snappin'!--like gosh! Kem along--ker--clump torords me. Reckoned he'd
skeer me! Didn't skeer me worth a cent. I heaved a rock at him--I did
now!" (in defiance of murmurs of derisive comment)--"'n he slid. Ef
he'd kem up furder I'd hev up with my slate and swotted him over the
snoot--bet your boots!"

The master here thought fit to interfere, and gravely point out that
the habit of striking bears as large as a horse with a school-slate was
equally dangerous to the slate (which was also the property of Tuolumne
County) and to the striker; and that the verb "to swot" and the noun
substantive "snoot" were likewise indefensible, and not to be tolerated.
Thus admonished Jimmy Snyder, albeit unshaken in his faith in his own
courage, sat down.

A slight pause ensued. The youthful Filgee, taking advantage of it,
opened in a higher key, "Tige ith"--but the master's attention was here
diverted by the searching eyes of Octavia Dean, a girl of eleven, who
after the fashion of her sex preferred a personal recognition of her
presence before she spoke. Succeeding in catching his eye, she threw
back her long hair from her shoulders with an easy habitual gesture,
rose, and with a faint accession of color said:

"Cressy McKinstry came home from Sacramento. Mrs. McKinstry told mother
she's comin' back here to school."

The master looked up with an alacrity perhaps inconsistent with his
cynical auster