door and holding me up with a revolver in my own classroom.

And yet it was the simple, even the obvious, thing for him to do.
Given an automobile, success was certain. Sanstead House stood
absolutely alone. There was not even a cottage within half a mile.
A train broken down in the middle of the Bad Lands was not more
cut off.

Consider, too, the peculiar helplessness of a school in such a
case. A school lives on the confidence of parents, a nebulous
foundation which the slightest breath can destroy. Everything
connected with it must be done with exaggerated discretion. I do
not suppose Mr MacGinnis had thought the thing out in all its
bearings, but he could not have made a sounder move if he had been
a Napoleon. Where the owner of an ordinary country-house raided by
masked men can raise the countryside in pursuit, a schoolmaster
must do precisely the opposite. From his point of view, the fewer
people that know of the affair the better. Parents are a jumpy
race. A man may be the ideal schoolmaster, yet will a connection
with melodrama damn him in the eyes of parents. They do not
inquire. They are too panic-stricken for that. Golden-haired
Willie may be receiving the finest education conceivable, yet if
men with Browning pistols are familiar objects at his shrine of
learning they will remove him. Fortunately for schoolmasters it is
seldom that such visitors call upon them. Indeed, I imagine Mr
MacGinnis's effort to have been the first of its kind.

I do not, as I say, suppose that Buck, whose forte was action
rather than brain-work, had thought all this out. He had trusted
to luck, and luck had stood by him. There would be no raising of