llow had the authority.
And the right to close the door between them! This being actually the
case he whirled about and resumed his marching back and forth; and his
spurs began snapping their jaws again.

Janet, when she saw the door shut, caught her breath and paid strict
attention to the paper. The examiner, evidently unconscious of
anything but his own precise self, went officially to the blackboard
and took up next the writing of another set of questions. He wrote
impromptu and with considerable readiness, pausing occasionally to
think up a poser.

Regularly she heard her escort coming down the hall on his return trip,
and each time she suspended mental operations until he was safely away
again. About the time that she had done her best, and worst, to the
subject of Geography, he failed to pass the door; his footsteps seemed
to turn with a new and lighter expression in some other direction.
Then she heard no more of him.

The next subject was Grammar. She caught glimpses of the questions as
her examiner walked back and forth from one end of a sentence to the
other. As grammar is a subject in which there is some limit to the
number of possible questions, she felt that she now had an advantage.
She would now do wonders providing he did not ask her something easy.

Luckily he did not. She pushed Geography aside and took a new sheet of
foolscap with every prospect of passing. At first it had looked very
much as if she were going to fail.

Steve's withdrawal had merely been due to the sudden realization that
he was making a great deal of noise in the court-house; whereupon he
saw that, all things considered, he could contain himself better
somewhere else. He went down the stairs, through the corridor, and out
of the grounds. Thence his feet carried him clean to the other side of
town.

When he found himself upon the silent shore of the prairie he turned
about with the intention of going straight back, but he was three times
delayed, first at the hitching-rack in front of "Hart's General Store,"
where a knot of story-tellers halted him to tell him about the
phenomenal good time of his herder, and again in front of the
post-office, where another group of loiterers had to be listened to;
and finally, having made his escape when he felt that it was high time
to go, he had the bad luck to run into Judge Tillotson, whose
propensity to talk was such that he could not be denied a hearing
without good excuse.