Tige was an ill-conditioned brute by nature, and art had not improved him by cropping his ears and tail and investing him with a spiked collar.  He bore on his person, also, various not ornamental scars, marks of old battles; for Tige had fight in him, as was said before, and as might be guessed by a certain bluntness about the muzzle, with a projection of the lower jaw, which looked as if there might be a bull-dog stripe among the numerous bar-sinisters of his lineage.

It was hardly fair, however, to leave Alminy Cutterr waiting while this piece of natural history was telling.—­As she spoke of little Jo, who had been “haaf eat up” by Tige, she could not contain her sympathies, and began to cry.

“Why, my dear little soul,” said Mr. Bernard, “what are you worried about?  I used to play with a bear when I was a boy; and the bear used to hug me, and I used to kiss him,—­so!”

It was too bad of Mr. Bernard, only the second time he had seen Alminy; but her kind feelings had touched him, and that seemed the most natural way of expressing his gratitude.  Ahniny looked round to see if anybody was near; she saw nobody, so of course it would do no good to “holler.”  She saw nobody; but a stout young fellow, leading a yellow dog, muzzled, saw her through a crack in a picket fence, not a great way off the road.  Many a year he had been “hangin’ ‘raoun’” Alminy, and never did he see any encouraging look, or hear any “Behave, naow!” or “Come, naow, a’n’t ye ’shamed?” or other forbidding phrase of acquiescence, such as village belles under stand as well as ever did the nymph who fled to the willows in the eclogue we all remember.

No wonder he was furious, when he saw the school master, who had never seen the girl until within a week, touching with his lips those rosy cheeks which he had never dared to approach.  But that was all; it was a sudden impulse; and the master turned away from the young girl, laughing, and telling her not to fret herself about him,—­he would take care of himself.

So Master Langdon walked on toward his school-house, not displeased, perhaps, with his little adventure, nor immensely elated by it; for he was one of the natural class of the sex-subduers, and had had many a smile without asking, which had been denied to the feeble youth who try to win favor by pleading their passion in rhyme, and even to the more formidable approaches of young officers in volunteer companies, considered by many to be quite irresistible to the fair who have once beheld them from their windows in the epaulettes and plumes and sashes of the “Pigwacket Invincibles,” or the “Hackmatack Rangers.”