All week things had gone moderately well. The school now had twenty-four pupils, one of them a girl older than her teachers, another a married woman, Mrs. McIntosh, who, having brought her painfully shy little daughter to school had been obliged to stay with her. Mrs. McIntosh had at first meant only to look on, but the example set by the children had been too much for her, and she was now conning her first reader beside an eight year old girl. Azalea and Carin had almost ceased looking for trouble, and it was with a sharp shock of alarm that they saw Bud Coulter spring to his feet and shake a hard young fist in the direction of the quivering Skully. “No Simms can’t come to this here school while I’m here!” he shouted. “You git out o’ here, Skully Simms, you hear?” Simms cast one glance behind him as if for flight, but the firm hand of his friend Haystack Thompson upon his shoulder held him; then the second glance made him aware of all the children rising from their seats, of the flaming eyes and distorted mouth of Bud Coulter, and the next moment all of his fears vanished in a flare of the old inherited hate. He drew in his breath sharply through his teeth, leaped forward, all bunched up like an animal, and the next thing that anybody knew, the two boys were struggling together in the center of the schoolroom. The fiddler might have managed these two boys, but he saw in a moment that he would have trouble coping with what was likely to follow. For generations the neighbors who bore the names of the children within that school had taken sides in the long and dark struggle between the Simms and the Coulters, and now, in a flash, all their old loyalty to the “mean fighters” of their mountain was upon them. They leaped to their feet, got from the floor on to the seats, shrieking and stamping to cheer on their favorites. It was not a “scrap.” It was a war—an old war—in which men of both names had fallen, and for which they all thought it honorable to fight to the finish. Azalea, sitting stark still at her desk, saw, with wide-stretched eyes, her peaceful schoolroom turned into something resembling a cave of angry wildcats. Moreover, she knew enough about such quarrels to imagine what the outcome might be. “Carin,” she shrilled to her friend who had turned from the blackboard and stood paralyzed at what she beheld, “we must think—we must _think_!” But there was little time for thinking. They could see that in a few moments more every boy in the room would be at the throat of some other boy, all for the glory of the old war cries: “Coulter!” “Simms!” Just then, as Azalea was discovering how unlikely her “thinking” was to be of any use, an extraordinary sound smote her ears. It rolled out like thunder, it came in volleys like pistol shots, it was so strange, so loud, so mocking, that all save the fight-crazed boys at grips on the floor turned to see what it was. And what they saw was Haystack Thompson laughing!