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-fool furriner.”  Little Dave Dennison, of all those opposed to him, alone held out.  He appeared to be proof against Keith’s utmost efforts to be friends.

One day, however, Dave Dennison did not come to school.  Keith learned that he had fallen from a tree and broken his leg—­“gettin’ hawks’ eggs for Phrony,” Keith’s informant reported.  Phrony was quite scornful about it, but a little perky as well.

“If a boy was such a fool as to go up a tree when he had been told it wouldn’t hold him, she could not help it.  She did not want the eggs, anyhow,” she said disdainfully.  This was all the reward that little Dave got for his devotion and courage.

That afternoon Keith went over the Ridge to see Dave.

The Dennison home was a small farm-house back of the Ridge, in what was known as a “cove,” an opening in the angle between the mountains, where was a piece of level or partly level ground on the banks of one of the little mountain creeks.  When Keith arrived he found Mrs. Dennison, a small, angular woman with sharp eyes, a thin nose, and thin lips, very stiff and suspicious.  She had never forgiven Keith for his victory over her boys, and she looked now as if she would gladly have set the dogs on him instead of calling them off as she did when he strode up the path and the yelping pack dashed out at him.

She “didn’ know how Dave was,” she said glumly.  “The Doctor said he was better.  She couldn’ see no change.  Yes, he could go in, she s’posed, if he wanted to,” she said ungraciously.