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The editorial writer's glance dropped to the desk, where the money lay for the intended gift. The exchange editor sat perfectly still, gazing straight in front of him. The city editor walked softly to the window and looked out. "I'm a bad man," said Tobit McStenger, after three glasses of whiskey. And he was. In making the declaration, he echoed the expression of the community. He looked it.
The new school-teacher, a broad, awkward, bashful youth, painfully blond, came to town and accomplished that for which he had been called. He brought discipline to the primary school, an achievement none easier for the fact that many of his pupils were in their teens, and incidentally he suspended Tobit McStenger the younger.
Pilling thrust forth his arm with unexpected suddenness. Upon the floor, six feet behind his antagonist, was a cuspidor with jagged edges. And Tobit McStenger slept with his fathers. The jury acquitted the teacher on the plea of self-defense. The loungers in Couch's saloon judiciously said that it was a very bad break for Tobit McStenger to have made.
It was town talk that Tobit McStenger was a hard father; drunk or sober, he chastised little Tobe upon the slightest occasion. "But," said Tobit McStenger, after admitting his severity as a parent before the bar in Couch's saloon, "let any one else lay a finger on that kid! Just let 'em! They'll find out, jail or no jail, I'm ugly!"
Then, with a loud cry of rage, he leaped toward Pilling. The teacher turned and faced him. McStenger clapped one huge hand against Pilling's neck, and in an instant thereafter his long, bony fingers were pressing upon the teacher's throat, in what had the looks of a fatal clutch. But Pilling, with both his arms, violently forced McStenger from him.
The teacher took breath and McStenger reached for a whiskey decanter. The others in the saloon looked on with eager interest, fearing to come between such formidable combatants. Tony Couch ran out in search of the town's only policeman. McStenger advanced toward the teacher. Pilling was farm bred. He had chopped down trees with his right arm alone in his time.
And he went on to repeat for the thousandth time that when he was ugly he was a bad man. Whereupon the other loungers in Couch's saloon, "Honesty Tom Yerkes," the hauler, Sam Hatch, the bill-poster, and the rest, agreed that a man's manner of governing his household was his own business. Tobit McStenger had his word to say upon all village topics.
"Three times five are fifteen, three times six " A crashing sound was heard. McStenger had broken a window. Pilling looked around, as if seeking some impromptu weapon. While he was doing so, McStenger broke another window-pane with a club. Then McStenger went away. That evening, Pilling had Tobit McStenger arrested for malicious mischief.
He was took out of a home by a farmer, who gave him his name 'cause the boy didn't know his own, nor no one else did, and so he was brought up on the farm." "So that's the sort o' people they've put the education of our children into the hands uv!" exclaimed Tobit McStenger. "Well, all I got to say is, let him keep his hands off my boy Tobe, or he'll find out the kind of a tough customer I am."
He came quietly to an unoccupied spot at the end of the bar and ordered a glass of beer, without looking at the other drinkers. Some one nudged Tobit McStenger and pointed toward the white-haired young pedagogue. The noise of talk broke off abruptly.
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