ed the boy, trying to reach him with both fist
and foot. "I don't let nobody hit my brother."

Keith found that he had more trouble in quelling Dave, the smallest
member of the Dennison tribe, than in conquering the bigger brothers.

"Sit down and behave yourself," he said, shoving him into a seat and
holding him there. "I'm not going to hit him again if he
behaves himself."

Keith, having quieted Dave, looked to see that Jake was not much hurt.
He took out his handkerchief.

"Take that and wipe your face with it," he said quietly, and taking from
his desk his inkstand and some writing-paper, he seated himself on a
bench near the door and began to write letters. It grew late, but the
young teacher did not move. He wrote letter after letter. It began to
grow dark; he simply lit the little lamp on his desk, and taking up a
book, settled down to read; and when at last he rose and announced that
the culprits might go home, the wheezy strains of the three instruments
that composed the band at Gates's had long since died out, and Gordon
Keith was undisputed master of Ridge College.

His letter to the trustees was delivered that morning, saying that if
they would sustain his action he would do his best to make the school
the best in that section; but if not, his resignation was in
their hands.

"I guess he is the sort of medicine those youngsters need," said Dr.
Balsam. "We'd better let it work."

"I reckon he can ride 'em," said Squire Rawson.

It was voted to sustain him.

The fact that a smooth-faced boy, not as heavy as Jake Dennison by
twenty pounds, had "faced down" and quelled the Dennisons all three
together, and kept Jake Dennison from going where he wanted to go,
struck the humor of the trustees, and they stood by their teacher almost
unanimously, and even voted to pay for a new door, which he had offered
to pay for himself, as he said he might have to chop it down again. Not
that there was not some hostility to him among those to whom his methods
were too novel; but when he began to teach his pupils boxing, and showed
that with his fists he was more than a match for Jake Dennison, the
chief opposition to him died out; and before the year ended, Jake
Dennison, putting into practice the art he had learned from his teacher,
had thrashed Mr. William Bluffy, the cock of another walk high up across
the Ridge, for ridiculing the "newfangled foolishness" of Ridge College,
and speaking of its teacher as a "dom-foo