don't intend to be mean."

She went up to bed proving to herself that the members of the
school-board were superior men.

It was Tuesday afternoon before she learned that the board had met
at ten in the morning and voted to "accept Miss Fern Mullins's
resignation." Sam Clark telephoned the news to her. "We're not making
any charges. We're just letting her resign. Would you like to drop over
to the hotel and ask her to write the resignation, now we've accepted
it? Glad I could get the board to put it that way. It's thanks to you."

"But can't you see that the town will take this as proof of the
charges?"

"We're--not--making--no--charges--whatever!" Sam was obviously finding
it hard to be patient.

Fern left town that evening.

Carol went with her to the train. The two girls elbowed through a silent
lip-licking crowd. Carol tried to stare them down but in face of
the impishness of the boys and the bovine gaping of the men, she was
embarrassed. Fern did not glance at them. Carol felt her arm tremble,
though she was tearless, listless, plodding. She squeezed Carol's hand,
said something unintelligible, stumbled up into the vestibule.

Carol remembered that Miles Bjornstam had also taken a train. What would
be the scene at the station when she herself took departure?

She walked up-town behind two strangers.

One of them was giggling, "See that good-looking wench that got on here?
The swell kid with the small black hat? She's some charmer! I was here
yesterday, before my jump to Ojibway Falls, and I heard all about
her. Seems she was a teacher, but she certainly was a high-roller--O
boy!--high, wide, and fancy! Her and couple of other skirts bought a
whole case of whisky and went on a tear, and one night, darned if this
bunch of cradle-robbers didn't get hold of some young kids, just small
boys, and they all got lit up like a White Way, and went out to a
roughneck dance, and they say----"

The narrator turned, saw a woman near and, not being a common person nor
a coarse workman but a clever salesman and a householder, lowered
his voice for the rest of the tale. During it the other man laughed
hoarsely.

Carol turned off on a side-street.

She passed Cy Bogart. He was humorously narrating some achievement to a
group which included Nat Hicks, Del Snafflin, Bert Tybee the bartender,
and A. Tennyson O'Hearn the shyster lawyer. They were men far older than
Cy but they accepted him as one of their own, and encourag