bills were unknown.

John Hunter went to the door to clean some extra mud off his boot tops,
and to hide a wide and fatuous smile at the thought of tricking Silas out
of his accustomed joke. He felt nearer the girl, because she too had been
silent regarding the afternoon encounter. He liked the mutuality of it and
resolved that it should not be the last touch of that sort between them.
While not really intellectual, John Hunter had the polish and tastes of
the college man, and here he reflected was a girl who seemed near being on
his own level. She looked, he thought, as if she could see such small
matters as bespattered clothes.

Silas followed him out. "You didn't bed them horses down did you?" he
asked.

"No. I expect we'd better do it now and have it out of the way."

As they entered the dark stable and felt their way along the back of the
little alley, behind the stalls, for the pitchforks, the younger man asked
indifferently:

"Who did you say the young lady was?"

"Oh, ho!" shouted Silas; "it didn't take you long. I knew you'd be
courtin' of me along with your questions. Now look here, John Hunter, you
can't go an' carry this schoolma'am off till this here term's finished. I
look fur Carter an' that new director over to-night, for a school meetin',
an' I'm blamed if I'm goin' t' have you cuttin' into our plans--no,
sirr-ee--she's t' be left free t' finish up this school, anyhow, if I help
'er get it."

"No danger! You get her the school; but how does she come to have that air
away out here? Does she come from some town near here?"

"Town nothin'! She was jest raised on these prairies, same as th' rest of
us. Ain't she a dandy! No, sir--'er father's a farmer--'bout as common as
any of us, an' she ain't had no different raisin'. She's different in
'erself somehow. Curious thing how one body'll have a thing an' another
won't, an' can't seem t' get it, even when he wants it an' tries. Now you
couldn't make nothin' but jest plain farmer out of me, no matter what you
done t' me."

"Do you think they'll give her the school?" John asked.

Silas's laugh made the young man uncomfortable. He had intended to avoid
the necessity for it, but had forgotten himself.

"There's Carter now," was all the reply the old man gave as he moved
toward the door, which he could dimly see now that he had been in the
darkness long enough for his eyes to become accustomed to it. The
splashing footsteps of a horse and the voice of