repressing the animal and developing the finer nature, now found a need of just what the bulldog had.  And so, with the thought of how his friend the dog would fight in a desperate strait, he determined to take hold of his difficulties as Bull took hold of the raccoon.  Moral questions he postponed for careful decision.  But for the present he set his teeth together in a desperate, bulldog fashion, and he set his feet down slowly, positively, bulldoggedly.  After a wretched supper at Pete Jones’s he found himself at the spelling-school, which, owing to the absence of Hannah, and the excitement about the burglary, was a dull affair.  Half the evening was spent in talking in little knots.  Pete Jones had taken the afflicted “Dutchman” under his own particular supervision.

“I s’pose,” said Pete, “that them air fellers what robbed your house must a come down from Jinkins Run.  They’re the blamedest set up there I ever see.”

“Ya-as,” said Schroeder, “put how did Yinkins vellers know dat I sell te medder to te Shquire, hey?  How tid Yinkins know anyting ’bout the Shquire’s bayin’ me dree huntert in te hard gash—­hey?”

“Some scoundrels down in these ‘ere parts is a-layin’ in with Jinkins Run, I’ll bet a hoss,” said Pete.  Ralph wondered whether he’d bet the one with the white left forefoot and the white nose.  “Now,” said Pete, “ef I could find the feller that’s a-helpin’ them scoundrels rob us folks, I’d help stretch him to the neardest tree.”

“So vood I,” said Schroeder.  “I’d shtretch him dill he baid me my dree huntert tollars pack, so I vood.”

And Betsey Short, who had found the whole affair very funny, was transported 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.