"Well, I'll tell you. Mrs. Bentley is old man Aimes' sister, and she's over here now on a visit, and when she heard that you were teaching school in the neighborhood she declared that it would be a mercy if you didn't kill somebody before you got through. And then she told that you had waylaid her son one night and come mighty nigh killing him. She said that she was perfectly willing to forgive you until she saw the scar left on her son's forehead, and a woman can't very well forgive a scar, you know. Old Aimes and all his sons are slaughter-house dogs, and they appeared to take up a hatred against you at once. Don't you remember as we drove to the school a boy threw a chunk at us as we were passing a clearing and swore that he could whip us both? Well, that was the youngest Aimes, and the trick now is, as I understand it, to send him to school with instructions to do pretty much as he pleases and to take revenge on you in case you whip him. Millie said that her father swore that it was a shame and that if you wanted any help from him you could get it. Nobody likes the Aimes family. Came in here several years ago, and have been kicking up disturbances ever since." I told Alf why I had snatched Bentley off his horse, nor in the least did I shield myself. I even called myself a brute. But I told him of the season of sorrow and humiliation through which I had passed, that I had insisted upon giving Bentley the only valuable thing I possessed, that against his mother's command I had striven to work for him during the time he was laid up, and that I had even plowed his field at night. "I don't know that you were so far wrong in beating him in the first place," said Alf, "but if you were, your course afterward should have more than atoned for it. By gracious, I feel that if some one would plow for me I'd let him maul me until he got tired. Millie said that she was afraid that something might happen to get you into trouble. She seemed a good deal concerned about it, for I reckon she's got the noblest and purest heart of any human being now in the world, and she said that she thought that if you were to give up the school her father could make some arrangements for you to study law in Purdy, the county seat. I told her that you would be delighted to quit teaching under ordinary circumstances, but that just at present you'd teach or die. Was I right?" "Surely, and I thank you for having defined my position. I wonder if we can commit an innocent error, an error that will lie asleep and never rise up to confront us? Now, I shall have a fine reputation in this neighborhood."