Seth's father that if I ever found Seth and Cressy together again, I'd
shoot him. It made a sort o' coolness betwixt the families, and hez
given some comfort to them low-down Harrisons; but even the law, I
reckon, recognizes a father's rights. And ez Cress sez, now ez Seth's
out o' the way, thar ain't no reason why she can't go back to school and
finish her eddication. And I reckoned she was right. And we both agreed
that ez she'd left school to git them store clothes, it was only fair
that she'd give the school the benefit of 'em."

The case seemed more hopeless than ever. The master knew that the man
beside him might hardly prove as lenient to a second objection at his
hand. But that very reason, perhaps, impelled him, now that he knew his
danger, to consider it more strongly as a duty, and his pride revolted
from a possible threat underlying McKinstry's confidences. Nevertheless
he began gently:

"But you are quite sure you won't regret that you didn't avail yourself
of this broken engagement, and your daughter's outfit--to send her to
some larger boarding-school in Sacramento or San Francisco? Don't
you think she may find it dull, and soon tire of the company of mere
children when she has already known the excitement of"--he was about to
say "a lover," but checked himself, and added, "a young girl's freedom?"

"Mr. Ford," returned McKinstry, with the slow and fatuous misconception
of a one-ideaed man, "when I said just now that, lookin' inter that kam,
peaceful school of yours, I didn't find a place for Cress, it warn't
because I didn't think she OUGHTER hev a place thar. Thar was that thar
wot she never had ez a little girl with me and the old woman, and that
she couldn't find ez a grownd up girl in any boarding-school--the home
of a child; that kind o' innocent foolishness that I sometimes reckon