After five minutes of patient, puzzled waiting they added their horses to those already grazing among the sagebrush, and stole quietly to the open window. The new teacher sat in the middle of the battered, scarred, ugly little room. She held her two youngest children upon her lap much to the detriment of her new apron. A dirty eager face was raised to hers from either side of her chair. The others of her twenty charges sat as near as the seats would permit. The big Jarvis boy had not deigned to move toward the front--that was too much of a concession for the first day--but he was leaning forward in his seat, his big, shaggy, unkempt head resting in his folded arms, his eyes never leaving Mary's face. She was telling them the story of the _Dog of Flanders_. The Vigilantes, crouching beneath the window, heard her as she finished. "The next day," she said, "they came to the great cathedral, and found Nello and Patrasche dead upon the stone floor. People were sorry then. Alois' father was one who came. He realized how cruel he had been to Nello, and was ready now to help him. But it was too late. Little Alois came also. She begged Nello to wake and come home for the Christmas festivities, and cried when she saw that he could not. Then a great artist came. He had seen Nello's picture of the old man on the fallen tree, and he knew that some day Nello might become a wonderful painter, even though another had won the Antwerp prize. He wanted to take Nello away with him, he said, and teach him art. But he, also, was too late, for Nello and Patrasche had gone away together to a Kinder Country. All their lives they had not been separated, and so the people of their little village, sorry and ashamed, made them one grave and laid them to rest together." There was a silence in the Bear Canyon school-house until a little girl in a pink apron sobbed. Sobs were at a discount in Bear Canyon, and yet strangely enough no one laughed. Allan Jarvis, in the back seat, was intent upon his finger-nails. The others were gazing admiringly at their new teacher. "It's such a sad story," said the little girl, using her pink apron for a handkerchief, "but I like it all the same." "Deary me!" cried the new teacher, depositing the two littlest ones on the floor, "it's half-past four! We must close school at once!" At that the big Jarvis boy left his seat and came down the aisle, for the first time in his life abstaining from pulling the hair of the girls nearest him. "Shan't I get your horse ready for you, ma'am?" he asked. The new teacher smiled gratefully upon him. "If you please, Allan," she said. "I'll be ever so much obliged." And Allan Jarvis departed for the horse sheds--a conquered hero!