owever quickened his pace and joined Rupert, laying
his hand familiarly as of old on his shoulder. To his surprise the boy
received his advances with some constraint and awkwardness, glancing
uneasily in the direction of Johnny. A sudden idea crossed Mr. Ford's
mind.

"Were you looking for me at the schoolroom just now?"

"No, sir."

"You didn't look in at the window to see if I was there?" continued the
master.

"No, sir."

The master glanced at Rupert. Truth-telling was a part of Rupert's
truculent temper, although, as the boy had often bitterly remarked, it
had always "told agin' him."

"All right," said the master, perfectly convinced. "It must have been my
fancy; but I thought somebody looked in--or passed by the window."

But here Johnny, who had overheard the dialogue and approached them,
suddenly threw himself upon his brother's unoffending legs and commenced
to beat and pull them about with unintelligible protests. Rupert,
without looking down, said quietly, "Quit that now--I won't, I tell ye,"
and went through certain automatic movements of dislodging Johnny as if
he were a mere impeding puppy.

"What's the matter, Johnny?" said the master, to whom these gyrations
were not unfamiliar.

Johnny only replied by a new grip of his brother's trousers.

"Well, sir," said Rupert, slightly recovering his dimples and his
readiness, "Johnny, yer, wants me to tell ye something. Ef he wasn't
the most original self-cocking, God-forsaken liar in Injin Spring--ef
he didn't lie awake in his crib mornin's to invent lies fer the day, I
wouldn't mind tellin' ye, and would hev told you before. However, since
you ask, and since you think you saw somebody around the school-house,
Johnny yer allows that Seth Davis is spyin' round and followin' ye
wherever you go, and he dragged me down yer to see it. He says he saw
him doggin' ye."

"With a knife and pithtolth," added Johnny's boundless imagination, to
the detriment of his limited facts.

Mr. Ford looked keenly from the one to the other, but rather with a
suspicion that they were cognizant of his late fracas than belief in the
truth of Johnny's statement.

"And what do YOU think of it, Rupert?" he asked carelessly.

"I think, sir," said Rupert, "that allowin'--for onct--that Johnny ain't
lying, mebbee it's Cressy McKinstry that Seth's huntin' round, and
knowin' that she's always runnin' after you"--he stopped, and reddening
with a newborn sense that his fatal truth