little group as there is now in every school, from some new place in
Oklahoma to old Oxford, over seas. In all scholarship, it chanced that
this same boy, Grant Harlson, was easily in the lead. His mother, an
ex-teacher in another and older State, loving, regardful, tactful, had
taught him how to read and comprehend, and he had something of a taste
that way and a retentive memory. So, inside the rugged schoolroom, he
had a certain prestige. Outside, he took his chances.




CHAPTER V.

GRIM-VISAGED WAR.

It has been said that there were some twenty children in the school.
They were of various degrees and fortunes. There were the sons and
daughters of the land-owners, the pioneers, and there were the sons and
daughters of the men who worked for them, mostly the drifting class,
who occupied log houses on unclaimed ground and got flour or meal or
potatoes for their services with the steadier or more masterful. In
the school, though, there were no distinctions on this account. There
were but two measurements of standing among girls and boys together,
their relative importance in their classes, the teacher giving force to
this, and among the boys alone the equation resulting from the issue of
all personal encounter. Boys will be boys, and our fighting
Anglo-Saxon blood will tell.

There were Harrison Woodell and George Appleton and Frank Hoadly and
Mortimer Butler, among the older boys; and, among the second growth,