"Mr. Tom Lorrigan, you can just call those children back!" she cried, her lips bluing in the cold gale that beat upon her. "Do you think that with all your lawlessness you can come and break up my school? You have bullied my father--" "I'd do worse than bully him, if I had him in handy reach right now," Tom drawled, and took her by the shoulder and pushed her inside. "Any man that will let a woman sit all day in a place like this--and I don't care a damn if you are earning money doing it!--oughta have his neck wrung. I'm going to saddle your horse for yuh while you bundle up. And then you're going home, if I have to herd yuh like I would a white heifer. I always have heard of Scotch stubbornness--but there's something beats that all to thunder. Git yore things on. Yore horse will be ready in about five minutes." He bettered his estimate, returning in just four minutes to find the door locked against him. "Don't you _dare_ come in here!" Mary Hope called out, her voice shrill with excitement. "I--I'll _brain_ you!" "Oh, you will, will yuh?" Whereupon Tom heaved himself against the door and lurched in with the lock dangling. Mary Hope had a stick of wood in her two hands, but she had not that other essential to quick combat, the courage to swing the club on the instant of her enemy's appearance. She hesitated, backed and threatened him futilely. "All right--fine! Scotch stubbornness--and not a damn thing to back it up! Where's your coat? Here. Git into it." Without any prelude, any apology, he wrested the stick of wood from her, pulled her coat off a nail near by, and held it outspread, the armholes convenient to her hands. With her chin shivering, Mary Hope obeyed the brute strength of the man. She dug her teeth into her lip and thrust her arms spitefully into the coat sleeves. "Here's yo're hat. Better tie it on, if yuh got anything to tie it with. Here." He twitched his big silk neckerchief from his neck, pulled her toward him with a gentle sort of brutality, and tied the neckerchief over her hat and under her chin. He did it exactly as though he was handling a calf that he did not wish to frighten or hurt. "Got any mittens? Gloves? Put 'em on."