His books strapped together with a discarded bridle rein, and dangling over his shoulder, Harky Mundee placed one reluctant foot after the other as he strode down the dirt road.

The events that culminated in this dreadful situation—returning to Miss Cathby's school at the Crossroads—had for the past three days been building up like a thunderstorm, and on the whole, it would have been easier to halt the storm. Every autumn, just after the harvest, Mun acquired firm ideas concerning the value of higher education for Harky. But never before had Mun resorted to such foul tricks or taken such unfair advantage.

Coming to where Tumbling Run foamed beneath a wooden bridge and hurled itself toward Willow Brook, Harky halted and rested both elbows on the bridge railing. He looked glumly into the icy water, along which coons of high and low degree prowled every night, and he wished mightily that he were a coon.

Though even coons had their troubles, Harky had never known of a single one that had been forced to hoe corn, milk cows, feed pigs, pitch hay, dig potatoes, or do any of the other unspeakable tasks that were forever falling to the lot of human beings. But even farm chores were not entirely unbearable. In a final agony of desperation, his cause already lost, Harky had even pointed out to Mun that the fence needed mending and hadn't he better cut the posts?

"Blast it!" Mun roared. "Stop this minute tryin' to make a fool of me, Harky! You know's well as I do that the cows ain't goin' to be out to pasture more'n 'nother three weeks! You need some book lore!"

Harky rubbed the heel of his right shoe against the shin of his left leg and wished again that he were a coon, even a treed coon. Being hound-cornered was surely preferable to becoming the hapless victim of Miss Ophelia Cathby.

Grasping the very end of the bridle rein, Harky whirled the books around his head. But exactly on the point of releasing the strap and reveling in the satisfying distance the books would fly, Harky brought them to a stop and slung them back over his shoulder.

He sighed. Free to walk the two miles to the Crossroads, with Mun not even in attendance, Harky was anything except free to throw his books away and explore Tumbling Run. When he ran away from farm tasks, which he did at every opportunity, the worst he could expect was the flat of Mun's hand.

But if he did not show up at school this morning, and for as many mornings hereafter as Mun thought necessary, he would never see his shotgun again. Harky lived again the inhuman scene wherein he had been subjected to torture more intense than any mortal should ever endure. Mun took the shotgun, locked it in his tool case, pocketed the key and addressed Harky:

"Thar! Now jest peg on to school, an' I aim to see Miss Cathby an' find out if ya did! Hingein' on what she tells me, ya kin have the shotgun back!"

Harky permitted himself a second doleful sigh. A man could take a hiding even if it were laid on with a hickory gad. But a man might better lose life itself rather than the only gun he had or could hope to get, at least in the foreseeable future. Mun was a man of his word. Harky saw himself in a fiendish trap from which there was no faint hope of escape.

He glanced at the sun, and from the length of the shadows it was casting deduced that it still lacked forty-five minutes of nine o'clock, the hour at which Miss Cathby called her classes to order. If he stuck to the road, forty-five minutes was at least thirty-eight more than he needed to cover the less than a mile remaining between himself and the Crossroads. But there were excellent reasons why he could not stick to the road.

Raw Stanfield, Butt Johnson, Bear Pen Crawford, and Mule Domster all lived upstream from the Mundee farm. Mellie Garson and Pine Heglin lived down. Harky had not hesitated to walk openly past Mellie's farm, for though Mellie had been an enthusiastic sire, he had begat only daughters. They were all pretty enough to be snatched up the moment they came of marriageable age, and the four oldest were happily married. But girls of all ages were forever gadding about doing silly things that interested girls only. Though they probably would think it a modern miracle, Mellie's eight youngest would not consider it necessary to rub salt in Harky's already-raw wounds simply because he was going to school.

Pine Heglin had specialized in sons, of which he had seven. The six eldest were carbon copies of their father. It was said along Willow Brook that if one cared to give Pine or any of his six elder sons a good laugh in January, one had only to tell them a good joke the preceding April.

The youngest Heglin, named Loring and called Dib, had been born on Halloween and showed it. Every witch who walked must have touched Dib Heglin, and among other questionable gifts they'd bestowed a tongue with a hornet's sting.

Dib was three months older than Harky. He did not go to school. He found endless amusement in the fact that Harky did go. Harky had no wish to meet Dib.

A quarter of a mile on the upstream side of the Heglin farm, Harky started into the woods and stopped worrying. Dib was a not-unskilled woodsman. But he'd never studied in the stark school from which Harky had graduated with honors; anyone able to hide from Mun Mundee could elude fifty Dib Heglins.

A sour chuckle escaped Harky. Dib, who knew how to add two and two, would know that the Mundees' harvest was ended. Nobody would have to tell him that this was the logical day for Mun to expose Harky to some more of Miss Cathby's education. No doubt he'd got up a half hour early just so he could wait for Harky and insult him when he appeared.

Presently, as it always did, the magic of the forest overwhelmed less desirable influences. Miss Cathby and her school, while not far enough away to let Harky forget he'd better be there on time, needn't be faced for the immediate present. Harky found himself wondering.

Duckfoot had grown like a weed in the corn patch, and to the casual observer he was not greatly different from other gangling hound puppies. But a careful scrutiny revealed him as a dog of diverse talents. There was the incident of the root cellar.

Because it would not keep long in warm weather, meat was at a premium along Willow Brook during the summer months. When somebody butchered, it was both practical and practice to share with his neighbors.

Mule Domster butchered a hog, and to the Mundees he brought a ham and a loin. Mun stored both in the root cellar, that was closed by a latch. The latch was lifted by a string dangling down the door. While Duckfoot, who to all appearances was interested only in scratching a flea behind his ear, sat sleepily near, Mun removed the ham.

Shortly afterward, returning for the loin and finding an empty space where it had been, Mun went roaring to the house for his rifle. Since no farmer of the Creeping Hills would think of robbing his neighbor's root cellar, obviously an unprincipled and hungry stranger had come up Willow Brook. Finding no tracks, Mun further declared that he was a cunning stranger.

Harky had a feeling. It was based on the fact that Duckfoot, who normally ate like a horse except that he did not chew his food nearly as much, was not at all hungry when his meal was put before him. It meant nothing, asserted Mun, for he had flushed an early flight of teal from Willow Brook and Duckfoot was perturbed by the ducks. Harky watched the root cellar.

Evening shadows were merging into black night when Duckfoot padded to the door, reared, pulled the latch string with his teeth, and entered. Since Mun was sure to take a dim view of such goings on, Harky never betrayed the thief. All he did was break the latch and replace it with an exterior latch that was not string-operated.

That happened shortly before Duckfoot disappeared for a whole week. To be expected, said Mun, for wild ducks were passing daily now and doubtless Duckfoot had gone in search of his father. But Harky had another feeling.

He'd been with Duckfoot along Willow Brook, or near one of the ponds, when wild ducks flushed. Far from betraying his duck blood, Duckfoot had given them not the slightest attention. Could it be, thought Harky, that a coon, maybe Old Joe himself, had come raiding? Had Duckfoot trailed him, treed him, and stayed at the tree until he was just too tired and hungry to stay longer?

Mun scoffed at such notions. He pointed out that Duckfoot was still a puppy who, as far as anyone knew, had never been on a coon's trail. So what could he know about running coons, especially Old Joe? Harky was indulging in another pipe dream even to think that a puppy, any puppy, would tree a coon and stay at the tree for a week. Precious Sue herself wouldn't have stayed that long.

Harky knew only that Duckfoot was lean as a blackberry cane when he finally came home and that he kept looking off into the forest. If he hadn't treed a coon, he certainly acted as though he had.

In sudden panic Harky realized that he had a scant four minutes left. He began to run, and he burst into Miss Cathby's school just as the last bell was tolling laggards to their desks.

The school was a one-room affair flanked by a woodshed half as big as the school proper. Inside were the regulation potbellied stove, six rows of five desks each, a desk for Miss Cathby, and a plain wooden bench upon which the various classes seated themselves when called to recite. Behind Miss Cathby's desk was the blackboard. If it was not the ultimate in educational facilities, it was a vast improvement over the no school at all that had been at the Crossroads until three years ago.

When Harky ran in, his fellow pupils were seated.

The first grade, consisting of the younger daughters of Mellie Garson and Raw Stanfield, and the youngest sons of Butt Johnson and Mule Domster, was the largest. Thereafter the grades decreased numerically but with an increasing feminine contingent. Boys old enough to help out at home could hardly be expected to waste time in school. Melinda and Mary Garson were the fifth grade, Harky the sixth, and Mildred and Minnie Garson the seventh and eighth.

Miss Cathby smiled pleasantly when Harky came in.

"Good morning, Harold," she greeted.

"Good morning, ma'am," Harky mumbled.

"Is your father's harvest in, Harold?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Harky, who knew his name was Harold but wished Miss Cathby didn't know, squirmed and longed to drop through the floor. With the only other male who even approached his age being Mule Domster's ten-year-old son, he was indeed surrounded.

Miss Cathby, who knew several things not written in textbooks, understood and let him alone. Harky fixed his eyes on the back of twelve-year-old Melinda Garson's slender neck. He calculated the exact spot where a spitball would have the ultimate effect, then decided that it wasn't worth his while to throw one.

The first grade was called for recitation. Solacing himself with the thought that Mun's enthusiasm for booklore seldom endured more than three weeks, Harky escaped in a dream. He had his shotgun, Duckfoot was hot on a coon's trail, and presently they heard his tree bark. Mun and Harky made their way to the tree.

"Harky," said Mun, "git your light beam on that coon."

Harky made ready to shine the treed coon. The words were repeated and he came rudely awake to discover that Miss Cathby was speaking.

"Harold," she said, "are you dreaming so soon?"

"Yes, ma'am," Harky said meekly.

"Well come down here. The sixth grade is called to recite."

Harky rose and shuffled unhappily to the recitation bench. He slumped down, head bent, shoulders hunched, fists in pockets. Never again, he thought, would he have any part in caging a coon. Not even to train Duckfoot. He knew now what cages are like.

"Have you been keeping up with your studies?" Miss Cathby asked.

"Yes, ma'am," said Harky.

"Which books have you been using?" queried Miss Cathby.

"Same ones I used last year," Harky mumbled.

Miss Cathby frowned prettily. Harky's last year's books were for the fifth grade; Harky had started in the fourth solely because he'd been too old to begin in the first. Miss Cathby's frown deepened.

She knew that, with the best of luck, Harky would be under her influence for a maximum four weeks. But Miss Cathby's fragile body harbored a will of granite. If she combined guile with persistence, four weeks were enough to turn this youngster from the heathenish ways of his ancestors and show him at least a glimmer of the one true light.

"Very well," she said pleasantly. "We'll review your last year's arithmetic. If a farmer harvests thirty tons of hay, sells two thirds and feeds the remainder, how much will he feed?"

Harky shuffled nervous feet and stared past her at the blackboard. "I never could figger that one, Miss Cathby."

Miss Cathby said, "It isn't difficult."

"Parts ain't," Harky admitted. "But parts are. He'll sell twenty tons, always reckoning he can find somebody to buy. The rest just shrivels me up."

Miss Cathby sighed. As soon as she proved to her own satisfaction that these backwoods boys were not morons, they proved her wrong. Anyone able correctly to deduce two thirds of thirty should be able to subtract twenty from thirty. A firm adherent of the idea that sugar entices flies where vinegar will not, Miss Cathby applied the sugar.

"Come, Harold," she coaxed. "If you have thirty potatoes and give twenty away, how many will you have left?"

"Ten," Harky said promptly. "But we was talking about tons of hay, not potatoes, and that ain't what crosses me up."

"What is it that you do not understand?" Miss Cathby pursued.

"What kind of critter a remainder is and how much hay does it eat?"

The fifth, seventh, and eighth grades, as represented by the sisters Garson, filled the room with giggles. Miss Cathby rapped for order and evolved a cunning plan to win Harky's interest and favor by discussing something he did know.

"Do you have a good raccoon hound for the coming season, Harold?"

Miss Cathby composed herself to listen while Harky launched an enthusiastic, and minutely detailed, description of the misadventures of Precious Sue and the wiles of Old Joe. He needed eighteen minutes to reach the thrilling climax, the discovery of Duckfoot and,

"His Pa's a duck," he said seriously.

"A duck!" Miss Cathby gasped.

"Not just a barnyard duck and not just a wild duck," Harky explained patiently. "It was some big old duck, maybe older'n Old Joe himself, that's been setting back in the woods just hoping Sue would come along."

Miss Cathby's eyes glowed with a true crusader's zeal. In all the time Harky had spent in school and all the time he would spend there, she could not hope to impart more than the rudiments of an education. But here was a heaven-sent opportunity to strike at the very roots of the ignorance and superstition that barred his march toward a more enlightened life. Miss Cathby saw past the boy to the father who would be. Strike Harky's chains and he would voluntarily free his children.

"That's impossible, Harold," she began.

Warming to her subject, she sketched the Garden of Eden, traced the history of mankind, disposed of witches and witch hunters in a few hundred well-chosen words, explained the laws of genetics, and finished with conclusive proof that a coon hound cannot mate with a duck.

Harky listened, not without interest. When it came to telling stories, he conceded, Miss Cathby was even better than Mun and almost as good as Mellie Garson. Nor was she shooting wholly in the dark; Harky himself did not believe that Duckfoot had been sired by a duck. But there was something wanting.

For a moment he could not define the lack. Then, happily, he thought of another of Pine Heglin's ideas. If apples were stored so they could not roll, Pine decided, there would be fewer bruised apples. Forthwith he constructed some latticeworks of willow withes, arranged them as shelves, and stored his apples on them. But Pine had forgotten that some apples are big and some small. The small ones fell through the lattices and the big ones became jammed in them. All were bruised, and rotted quickly, with the result that Pine had no apples at all.

Miss Cathby's lecture was like that, Harky decided. She would find an exact niche for Old Joe, Duckfoot, Mun, everything in the world, and she'd never stop to think that few things really belonged in exact niches. Her ideas just didn't have room to grow in. Mun's did.

"Can you prove to me, Harold, that there is any such creature as this witch duck?" Miss Cathby finished.

"No ma'am," said Harky, and he forebore to mention that neither could she prove there wasn't.

By some miracle, the endless day ended. The new books that Miss Cathby gave him strapped in the bridle rein and slung over his shoulder, Harky walked straight up the road. He had a feeling that was justified when he saw Dib Heglin waiting.

"Ya been to see Miss Cathby?" Dib squawked in a voice that would have maddened a sheep. "Did Miss Cathby give ya a bathby?"

Harky shifted the bridle rein from his right hand to his left. Effecting a gait that was supposedly a caricature of Miss Cathby's feminine walk, and was remarkably similar to the waddle of a fat goose, Dib came toward him.

"Ya been to see—?" he began.

They were near enough. Harky's right fist flicked out.

"Ya-ooo!" Dib shrieked.

Harky danced happily on. No day was wholly wasted if it left Dib Heglin nursing a bloody nose.