Weary rode stealthily around the corner of the little, frame school-house and was not disappointed.  The schoolma’am was sitting unconventionally upon the doorstep, her shoulder turned to him and her face turned to the trail by which a man naturally would be supposed to approach the place.  Her hair was shining darkly in the sun and the shorter locks were blowing about her face in a downright tantalizing fashion; they made a man want to brush them back and kiss the spot they were caressing so wantonly.  She was humming a tune softly to herself.  Weary caught the words, sung absently, under her breath: 

  “Didn’t make no blunder—­yuh couldn’t confuse him. 
  A perfect wonder, yuh had to choose him!”

The schoolma’am was addicted to coon songs of the period.

She seemed to be very busy about something and Weary, craning his neck to see over her shoulder, wondered what.  Also, he wished he knew what she was thinking about, and he hoped her thoughts were not remote from himself.  Just then Glory showed unmistakable and malicious intentions of sneezing, and Weary, catching a glimpse of something in Miss Satterly’s hand, hastened to make his presence known.

“I hope yuh aren’t limbering up that weapon of destruction on my account, Schoolma’am,” he observed mildly.

The schoolma’am jumped and slid something out of sight under her ruffled, white apron.  “Weary Davidson, how long have you been standing there?  I believe you’d come straight down from the sky or straight up from the ground, if you could manage it.  You seem capable of doing everything except coming by the trail like a sensible man.”  This with severity.

Weary swung a long leg over Glory’s back and came lightly to earth, immediately taking possession of the vacant half of doorstep.  The schoolma’am obligingly drew skirts aside to make room for him—­an inconsistent movement not at all in harmony with her eyebrows, which were disapproving.

“Yuh don’t like ordinary men.  Yuh said so, once when I said I was just a plain, ordinary man.  I’ve sworn off being ordinary since yuh gave me that tip,” he said cheerfully.  “Let’s have a look at that cannon you’re hiding under your apron.  Where did yuh resurrect it?  Out of some old Indian grave?

“Mamma!  It won’t go off sudden and unexpected, will it?  What kind uh shells—­oh, mamma!” He pushed his hat back off his forehead with a gesture not left behind with his boyhood, held the object the length of his long arm away and regarded it gravely.

It was an old, old “bull-dog” revolver, freckled with rust until it bore a strong resemblance to certain noses which Miss Satterly looked down upon daily.  The cylinder was plugged with rolls of drab cotton cloth, supposedly in imitation of real bullets.  It was obviously during the plugging process that Miss Satterly had been interrupted, for a drab string hung limply from one hole.  On the whole, the thing did not look particularly formidable, and Weary’s lips twitched.