e tale
of that ambiguously worded bequest and the subsequent gossip, for as
early as the next day she caught certain of Jim Briggs' boarders
looking at her with an interest they had not heretofore displayed--or,
rather, it should be said, with a _different_ sort of interest. They
were discussing her. She could not know it positively, but she felt it.

The feeling grew to certainty after Perkins' departure that day. There
was a different atmosphere. Probably, she reflected, he had thrown in
a few embellishments of his own for good measure. She felt a tigerish
impulse to choke him. But she was proud, and she carried her head in
the air, and, in effect, told Cariboo Meadows to believe as it pleased
and act as it pleased. They could do no more than cut her and cause
her to lose her school. She managed to keep up an air of cool
indifference that gave no hint of the despairing protest that surged
close to the surface. Individually and collectively, she reiterated to
herself, she despised men. Her resentment had not yet extended to the
women of Cariboo Meadows. They were mostly too busy with their work to
be much in the foreground. She did observe, or thought she observed, a
certain coolness in Mrs. Briggs' manner--a sort of suspended judgment.

In the meantime, she labored diligently at her appointed task of
drilling knowledge into the heads of a dozen youngsters. From nine
until three-thirty she had that to occupy her mind to the exclusion of
more troublesome things. When school work for the day ended, she went
to her room, or sat on the porch, or took solitary rambles in the
immediate vicinity, avoiding the male contingent as she would have
avoided contagious disease. Never, never, she vowed, would she trust
another man as far as she could throw him.

The first Saturday after the Perkins incident, Hazel went for a tramp
in the afternoon. She avoided the little hill close at hand. It left
a bad taste in her mouth to look at the spot. This was foolish, and
she realized that it was foolish, but she could not help the
feeling--the insult was still too fresh in her mind. So she skirted
its base and ranged farther afield. The few walks she had taken had
lulled all sense of uneasiness in venturing into the infolding forest.
She felt that those shadowy woods were less sinister than man. And
since she had always kept her sense of direction and come straight to
the Meadows whenever she went abroad, she had no f