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“How’d you know me so far off?”

“Puh! Don’t y’ s’pose I know that horse an’ those bells–Miss Moss, allow me”—- He helped her out with elaborate courtesy. “The supper and the old folks are here, and the girls and boys and the fun is over to Dudley’s,” he explained as he helped Bettie out.

“I’ll be back soon’s I put my horse up,” said Milton to Bettie. “You go in and get good ‘n’ warm, and then we’ll go over to the house.”

“I saved a place in the barn for you, Milt. I knew you’d never let Marc stand out in the snow,” said Shephard as he sprang in beside Milton.

“I knew you would. What’s the news? Is Ed here t’night?”

“Yeh-up. On deck with S’fye Kinney. It’ll make him swear when he finds out who Bettie come with.”

“Let him. Are the Yohe boys here?”

“Yep. They’re alwiss on hand, like a sore thumb. Bill’s been drinking, and is likely to give Ed trouble. He never’ll give Bettie up without a fight. Look out he don’t jump onto your neck.”

“No danger o’ that,” said Milton coolly.

The Yohe boys were strangers in the neighborhood. They had come in with the wave of harvest help from the South and had stayed on into the winter, making few friends and a large number of enemies among the young men of “the crick.” Everybody admitted that they had metal in them, for they instantly paid court to the prettiest girls in the neighborhood, without regard to any prior claims.

And the girls were attracted by these Missourians, their air of mysterious wickedness and their muscular swagger, precisely as a flock of barnyard fowl are interested in the strange bird thrust among them.

But the Southerners had muscles like wild-cats, and their feats of broil and battle commanded a certain respectful consideration. In fact, most of the young men of the district were afraid of the red-faced, bold-eyed strangers, one of the few exceptions being Milton, and another Shephard Watson, his friend and room-mate at the Rock River Seminary. Neither of these boys being at all athletic, it was rather curious that Bill and Joe Yohe should treat them with so much consideration.

Bill was standing before the huge cannon stove, talking with Bettie, when Milton and Shephard returned to the school-house. The man’s hard, black eyes were filled with a baleful fire, and his wolfish teeth shone through his long red mustache. It made Milton mutter under his breath to see how innocently Bettie laughed with him. She never dreamed and could not have comprehended the vileness of the man’s whole life and thought. No lizard reveled in the mud more hideously than he. His conversation reeked with obscenity. His tongue dropped poison each moment when among his own sex, and his eye blazed it forth when in the presence of women.

“Hello, Bill,” said Milton, with easy indifference. “How goes it?”

“Oh, ’bout so-so. You rather got ahead o’ me t’night, didn’t yeh?”

“Well, rather. The man that gets ahead o’ me has got t’ drive a good team, eh?” He looked at Bettie.

“I’d like to try it,” said Bill.

“Well, let’s go across the road,” said Milton to Bettie, anxious to get her out of the way of Bill.

They had to run the gauntlet of the whooping boys outside, but Bettie proved too fleet of foot for them all.

When they entered the Dudley house opposite, her cheeks were hot with color, but the roguish gleam in her eyes changed to a curiously haughty and disdainful look as she passed Blackler, who stood desolately beside the door, looking awkward and sullen.

Milton was a great favorite, and he had no time to say anything more to Bettie as peace-maker. He reached Ed as soon as possible.

“Ed, what’s up between you and Bettie?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I can’t find out,” Blackler replied, and he spurred himself desperately into the fun.

III.

“It’ll make Ed Blackler squirm t’ see Betsey come in on Milt Jennings’ arm,” said Bill to Shephard after Milton went out.