She dismissed the children primly, with a self-conscious dignity and some chagrin at their boorish clatter, their absolute ignorance of discipline. "I shall ring the bell in ten minutes," she told them while they scuffled to the door. "I shall give you two minutes after the bell rings to get into your seats and be prepared for duty. Every minute after that must be made up after school." "Ay skoll go home now, sen you skoll not keep me by school from tan minootes," the oldest of the Swedes stopped long enough to bellow at her from the doorway. "Ole og Helge skoll go med. Ve got long way from school, og ve don't be by dark ven ve come by home!" He seized the square tobacco boxes, originally made to hold a pound of "plug cut," and afterwards dedicated to whatever use a ranch man might choose to put them. Where schools flourished, the tobacco boxes were used for lunch. The Swedes carried three tied in flour sacks and fastened to the saddles. The wind carried them at a run to the corral. The two smaller boys, Ole and Helge, rode, one behind the other, on one horse, a flea-bitten gray with an enlarged knee and a habit of traveling with its neck craned to the left. Christian, the leader of the revolt, considered himself well-mounted on a pot-bellied bay that could still be used to round up cattle, if the drive was not more than a couple of miles. Looking after them from the window that faced the corral, Tom could not wonder that they were anxious to start early. "You better let the rest go, too," he advised the perturbed teacher, looking out at the four Boyle children huddled in the shelter of the shack, the skirts of the girl whipping in the wind like a pillowslip on a clothesline in a gale. "There ain't any sense trying to teach school in a place like this, in such weather. Don't you know them kids have got all of twelve miles to ride, facing this wind most of the way? And you've got to ride five miles; and when the sun drops it's going to be raw enough to put icicles on your ribs under the skin. Tell 'em to go home. Pore little devils, I wouldn't ask a cow-critter to face this wind after sundown." "You do not understand that I must have discipline in this school, Mr. Lorrigan. To-morrow I shall have to punish those Swedes for leaving school without permission. I shall make an example of Christian, for his impudence. I do not think he will want to disobey me again, very soon!" Mary Hope took her handkerchief from her pocket, refusing to consider for one moment the significance of its flapping in the wind while the windows and doors were closed. "You're just plain stubborn," Tom said bluntly. "You've no business hanging out in a place like this!" "I've the business of teaching school, Mr. Lorrigan. I suppose that is as important to me as your business is to you. And I can't permit my pupils to rebel against my authority. You would not let your men dictate to you, would you?"