"A soft answer turneth away wrath," a quiet voice whispered down to her, and continued: "Let the gal out; she wants ter go home!" "If you're some kind of a preacher," Tusk snarled at him, having also noticed the Biblical character of speech, "git out yohse'f. But the gal stays right heah till I'm ready fer her to go! An', young feller, mebbe she'll be let go home, or mebbe she'll come 'long with me--I ain't decided, but I won't be hindered by no one!" His voice was trembling with increasing passion. "Now's yoh time to git, Mister Preacher, or, by Gawd--" He drew a long, dirty knife from a hidden sheath, and seemed unable to complete the sentence for his excited breathing. "I hain't a preacher," the other quietly replied to him, "but I've jest been sendin' a message ter the Lawd this very evenin', 'n' I reckon He had me come in heah ter look ye over, bein' as how ye air one of them sorry skunks I'm arter." And without warning he sprang like a panther at the offender's throat. The shock of his body sent Tusk backwards, tripping him over a desk where both men went down in a heap. Almost before they struck the floor the newcomer cried to her: "Git the critter 'n' ride, Schoolteacher! Hit's yo' only chance!" He had no more time to warn, for a series of sounds, sickening, bestial sounds, told of a terrific struggle as feet and bodies and elbows dully crashed against the desks on either side. It was a narrow aisle in which to fight. Yet she was not made of the stuff that would mount a horse and fly. Her early life, when as a slip of a girl she stood many a night with rifle in hand filling the place of lookout for an outlaw father who trafficked in moonshine whisky, had taught her to be careless of physical dangers. The terrors of a different sort of passion she had never known; but now, with this averted, her nature leapt beyond the past eight years of training--eight years spent in fitting herself as teacher for this school--and transported her to those early days of partial savagery. Again she was the little mountain outlaw, and the feeling was good, and her heart bounded with a primeval pleasure of this excitement which was routing every previous qualm of fright. Bent breathlessly forward, her hands clenched into revengeful little fists, her cheeks and eyes aflame and eager, her lips apart, and her nostrils dilated as though in very truth they sought the smell of battle, she was not a picture of one who would mount a horse and fly.