as soon as she saw him. It would be easy, then, to persuade her to teach him.

But the splendid young savage, it appeared, was not going to need a teacher for the excellent reason that he would not be there. He refused, persistently and profanely, to leave his gun, his trails, his lawless habitat, and when Dr. Darrow came glumly[35] home to supper one night and reported hearing that Granny Manders was dead, Glen shared with him the conviction of failure. The great-grandmother had been his only urge toward civilization: now that she had folded her leathery little old claws for the last time, he could relapse, unhindered, into the wild ways of his forbears.

[35]

Glen stared at her lessons that evening without turning pages. She had small concern with their pallid problems—with how many miles A could walk in an hour, and B in three hours, if C could walk two and one-half miles. Lady Jane Grey’s delicate head dropped from the block without especial emphasis. Her whole preoccupation was with young Luke Manders.

So their golden legend was over! The old crone’s “son’s son’s son” would never be “fotched on” now. All that splendid strength and the fine young possibilities would narrow down to a shot from ambush, himself or his hereditary foe. If he held the family luck, he would bring down the ancient enemy of his house, skulking and hiding thereafter from a languid law; if it went against him, then he would topple forward one sunny day, one silver night, coincidentally with a harmless little popping sound, and lie face downward somewhere on the brown earth, high in his hills, a dark stain widening beneath him.

They stopped talking about him. “That’s finished,”[36] said the doctor gruffly, but Glen could see that disappointment gnawed deep.

[36]

Miss Ada was frankly relieved.

“I can understand your father’s kind and philanthropic interest in the lad, dear, but, believe me, it would have been a fruitless effort. He would have had his trouble for his pains. I have heard my own dear father say, under similar circumstances, employing a rather common but very forceful expression, that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!”

But seven days after Granny Mander’s death, Dr. Darrow’s doorbell rang at midnight. Stumbling sleepily into slippers and robe he went downstairs, swearing heartily, for it was wild weather, wind and rain, and he’d 

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