her with his knife, I hopped
out of my close-pen into the canon" 204

He woke and gave a low cry. Some one was sitting on his bed 224

"For a second it left off rainin' sand, and there was a
typhoon of mud and spray" 272

[Illustration]

I.--The Great Big Man[A]

_By Owen Johnson_

THE noon bell was about to ring, the one glorious spring note of that
inexorable "Gym" bell that ruled the school with its iron tongue. For at
noon, on the first liberating stroke, the long winter term died and the
Easter vacation became a fact.

Inside Memorial Hall the impatient classes stirred nervously, counting
off the minutes, sitting gingerly on the seat-edges for fear of
wrinkling the carefully pressed suits or shifting solicitously the
sharpened trousers in peril of a bagging at the knees. Heavens! how
interminable the hour was, sitting there in a planked shirt and a
fashion-high collar--and what a recitation! Would Easter ever begin,
that long-coveted vacation when the growing boy, according to theory,
goes home to rest from the fatiguing draining of his brain, but in
reality returns exhausted by dinners, dances, and theaters, with perhaps
a little touch of the measles to exchange with his neighbors. Even the
masters droned through the perfunctory exercises, flunking the boys by
twos and threes, by groups, by long rows, but without malice or emotion.

Outside, in the roadway, by the steps, waited a long, incongruous line
of vehicles, scraped together from every stable in the countryside,
forty-odd. A few buggies for nabobs in the Upper House, two-seated rigs
(holding eight), country buckboards, excursion wagons to be filled
according to capacity at twenty-five cents the trip, hacks from Trenton,
and the regulation stage-coach--all piled high with bags and suitcases,
waiting for the bell that would start them on the scramble for the
Trenton station, five miles away. At the horses' heads the lazy negroes
lolled, drawing languid puffs from their cigarettes, unconcerned.

Suddenly the bell rang out, and the supine teamsters, galvanizing into
life, jumped to their seats. The next moment, down the steps, pell-mell,
scrambling and scuffling, swarming over the carriages, with joyful
clamor, the school arrived. In an instant the first buggies were off,
with whips frantically plied, disputing at a gallop the race to Trenton.

Then the air was filled wi