When she reached home there were still signs of tears on her face, and when Anson came out to help her alight, and noticing it asked, "What's the matter?" she burst out afresh, crying, and talking incoherently. Anson was astonished. "Why, what's the matter, Flaxie? Can't you tell ol' pap? Are ye sick?" She shook her head, and rushed past him into the house and into her bedroom, like a little cyclone of wrath. Ans slowly followed her, much perplexed. She was lying face downward on the bed, sobbing. "What's the matter, little one? Can't y' tell ol' pap? Have the girls be'n makin' fun o' yeh again?" She shook her head. "Have the boys be'n botherin' yeh?" No reply. "Who was it?" Still silence. He was getting stern now. "Tell me right now." "Jack Reeves--an'--an' another feller." "Wha' d' they do?" Silence. "Tell me." "They--pinched me, an'--an'--talked mean to me," she replied, breaking down again with the memory of the insult. Anson began to understand. "Wal, there! You dry y'r eyes, Flaxie, an' go an' git supper; they won't do it again--not this harvest," he added grimly as he marched to the door to enter the buggy. Bert, coming along from the barn and seeing Anson about to drive away, asked where he was going. Anson tried to look indifferent. "Oh, I've got a little business to transact with Reeves and some other smart Aleck downtown." "What's up? What have they be'n doing?" asked Gearheart, reading trouble in the eyes of his friend. "Well, they have be'n a little too fresh with Flaxen to-day, an' need a lesson." "They're equal to it. Say, Anson, let me go," laying his hand on the dasher, ready to leap in. "No: you're too brash. You wouldn't know when to quit. No: you stay right here. Don't say anything to Flaxen about it; if she wants to know where I'm gone, tell her I found I was out o' nails." As Anson drove along swiftly he was in a savage mood and thinking deeply. Two or three times of late some of his friends had touched rather freely upon the fact that Flaxen was becoming a woman. "Girls ripen early out in this climate," one old chap had said, "and your little Norsk there is likely to leave you one of these days." He felt now that something deliberately and inexpressibly offensive had been said and done to his little girl. He didn't want to know just what it was, but just who did it; that was all. It was time to make a protest. Hitching his horse to a ring in the sidewalk upon arrival, he walked into the drug store, which was also the post-office. Young Reeves was inside the post-office corner giving out the mail, and Anson sauntered about the store waiting his chance. He was a dangerous-looking man just now. Ordinarily his vast frame, huge, grizzled beard, and stern, steady eyes would quell a panther; but now as he leaned against the counter a shrewd observer would have said, "Lookout for him; he's dangerous."