"Maw couldn't quite hitch on to your not drinkin'. She reckons you're
like everybody else about yer. That's where she slips up on you. And
everybody else, I kalkilate."

"I suppose she's somewhat anxious about your father, and I dare say is
expecting me to hurry," returned the master pointedly.

"Oh, dad's all right," said Cressy mischievously. "You'll come across
him over yon, in the clearing. But you're looking right purty with that
gun. It kinder sets you off. You oughter wear one."

The master smiled slightly, said "Good-by," and took leave of the girl,
but not of her eyes, which were still following him. Even when he had
reached the end of the lane and glanced back at the rambling dwelling,
she was still leaning on the gate with one foot on the lower rail and
her chin cupped in the hollow of her hand. She made a slight gesture,
not clearly intelligible at that distance; it might have been a
mischievous imitation of the way he had thrown the gun over his
shoulder, it might have been a wafted kiss.

The master however continued his way in no very self-satisfied mood.
Although he did not regret having taken the place of Cressy as the
purveyor of lethal weapons between the belligerent parties, he knew he
was tacitly mingling in the feud between people for whom he cared little
or nothing. It was true that the Harrisons sent their children to his
school, and that in the fierce partisanship of the locality this simple
courtesy was open to misconstruction. But he was more uneasily conscious
that this mission, so far as Mrs. McKinstry was concerned, was a
miserable failure. The strange relations of the mother and daughter
perhaps explained much of the girl's conduct, but it offered no hope of