Bella screamed.  She screamed and ran to Ben and clung to him, clasping her hands about his arm.  Ben lifted the hickory switch in his free hand and struck Dunder a sharp cut with it.  It was the first time in his life that he had done such a thing.  If he had had a sane moment from that time until the day he married Bella Huckins, he would never have forgotten the dumb hurt in Dunder’s stricken eyes and shrinking, quivering body.

Bella screamed again.  Still clinging to him, Ben was saying:  “He won’t hurt you.  He won’t hurt you,” meanwhile patting her shoulder reassuringly.  He looked down at her pale face.  She was so slight, so childlike, so apparently different from the sturdy country girls.  From—­well, from the girls he knew.  Her helplessness, her utter femininity, appealed to all that was masculine in him.  Bella the experienced, clinging to him, felt herself swept from head to foot by a queer, electric tingling that was very pleasant but that still had in it something of the sensation of a wholesale bumping of one’s crazy bone.  If she had been anything but a stupid little flirt, she would have realized that here was a specimen of the virile male with which she could not trifle.  She glanced up at him now, smiling faintly.  “My, I was scared!” She stepped away from him a little—­very little.

“Aw, he wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

But Bella looked over her shoulders fearfully to where Dunder stood by the roadside, regarding Ben with a look of uncertainty.  He still thought that perhaps this was a new game.  Not a game that he cared for, but still one to be played if his master fancied it.  Ben stooped, picked up a stone, and threw it at Dunder, striking him in the flank.  “Go on home!” he commanded, sternly.  “Go home!” He started toward the dog with a well-feigned gesture of menace.  Dunder, with a low howl, put his tail between his legs and loped off home, a disillusioned dog.

Bella stood looking up at Ben.  Ben looked down at her.

“You’re the new teacher, ain’t you?”

“Yes.  I guess you must think I’m a fool, going on like a baby about that dog.”

“Most girls would be scared of him if they didn’t know he wouldn’t hurt nobody.  He’s pretty big.”  He paused a moment, awkwardly.  “My name’s Ben Westerveld.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Bella, twiddling her fingers in assumed shyness.

“Which way was you going?  There’s a dog down at Tietjens that’s enough to scare anybody.  He looks like a pony, he’s so big.”

“I forgot something at the school this afternoon, and I was walking over to get it.”  Which was a lie.  “I hope it won’t get dark before I get there.  You were going the other way, weren’t you?”

“Oh, I wasn’t going no place in particular.  I’ll be pleased to keep you company down to the school and back.”  He was surprised at his own sudden masterfulness.

They set off together, chatting as freely as if they had known one another for years.  Ben had been on his way to the Byers farm, as usual.  The Byers farm and Emma Byers passed out of his mind as completely as if they had been whisked away on a magic rug.