year, and after waiting a
while, but always with my eye on the house, I quit work, slipped up here
and dressed myself so as to be ready to walk home with her. I was rather
afraid to ask her at first, knowing that this was breaking away from all
my former strings and announcing my determination of keeping company
with her, out and out, and I don't know exactly how I got at it, but I
did, and the first thing I knew I was walking down the road with her.
And this time I do remember what she said, but there wasn't anything so
encouraging in it. The fact is she had something to tell me about you."

"About me? What can she know about me? Probably she was giving you her
father's estimate of me."

"No, but somebody else's estimate," he replied. "You recollect a fellow
named Bentley?"

"Bentley? Of course, I do. We lived on adjoining farms, and I have a
sore cause to remember him. But how could she have heard anything about
him?"

"Well, I'll tell you. Mrs. Bentley is old man Aimes' sister, and she's
over here now on a visit, and when she heard that you were teaching
school in the neighborhood she declared that it would be a mercy if you
didn't kill somebody before you got through. And then she told that you
had waylaid her son one night and come mighty nigh killing him. She said
that she was perfectly willing to forgive you until she saw the scar
left on her son's forehead, and a woman can't very well forgive a scar,
you know. Old Aimes and all his sons are slaughter-house dogs, and they
appeared to take up a hatred against you at once. Don't you remember as
we drove to the school a boy threw a chunk at us as we were passing a
clearing and swore that he could whip us both? Well, that was the
youngest Aimes, and the trick now is, as I understand it, to send him to
school with instructions to do pretty much as he pleases and to take
revenge on you in case you whip him. Millie said that her father swore
that it was a shame and that if you wanted any help from him you could
get it. Nobody likes the Aimes family. Came in here several years ago,
and have been kicking up disturbances ever since."

I told Alf why I had snatched Bentley off his horse, nor in the least
did I shield myself. I even called myself a brute. But I told him of the
season of sorrow and humiliation through which I had passed, that I had
insisted upon giving Bentley the only valuable thing I possessed, that
against his mother's command I had striven to work f