d with a fit of tittering at poor Schroeder's English. Ralph,
fearing that his silence would excite suspicion, tried to talk. But he
could not tell what he knew, and all that he said sounded so hollow and
hypocritical that it made him feel guilty. And so he shut his mouth, and
meditated profitably on the subject of bull dogs. And when later he
overheard the garrulous Jones declare that he'd bet a hoss he could
p'int out somebody as know'd a blamed sight more'n they keerd to tell,
he made up his mind that if it came to p'inting out he should try to be
even with Jones.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE STRUGGLE IN THE DARK

It was a long, lonesome, fearful night that the school-master passed,
lying with nerves on edge and eyes wide open in that comfortless bed in
the "furdest corner" of the loft of Pete Jones's house, shivering with
cold, while the light snow that was falling sifted in upon the ragged
patch-work quilt that covered him. Nerves broken by sleeplessness
imagine many things, and for the first hour Ralph felt sure that Pete
would cut his throat before morning.

And you, friend Callow, who have blunted your palate by swallowing the
Cayenne pepper of the penny-dreadfuls, you wish me to make this night
exciting by a hand-to-hand contest between Ralph and a robber. You would
like it better if there were a trap-door. There's nothing so convenient
as a trap-door, unless it be a subterranean passage. And you'd like
something of that sort just here. It's so pleasant to have one's hair
stand on end, you know, when one is safe from danger to one's self. But
if you want each individual hair to bristle with such a "Struggle in
the Dark," you can buy trap-doors and subterranean passages dirt cheap
at the next news-stand. But it was, indeed, a real and terrible
"Struggle in the Dark" that Ralph fought out at Pete Jones's.

When he had vanquished his fears of personal violence by reminding
himself that it would be folly for Jones to commit murder in his own
house, the question of Bud and Hannah took the uppermost place in his
thoughts. And as the image of Hannah spelling against the master came up
to him, as the memory of the walk, the talk, the box-elder tree, and all
the rest took possession of him, it seemed to Ralph that his very life
depended upon his securing her love. He would shut his teeth like the
jaws of a bulldog, and all Bud's muscles should not prevail over his
resolution and his stratagems.

It was easy to per