When he had finished, the old man counted out his bills. Gordon said he
would give him his note for it, and his father would indorse it. The
other shook his head.

"No; I don't want any bond. I'll remember it and you'll remember it.
I've known too many men think they'd paid a debt when they'd given their
bond. I don't want you to think that. If you're goin' to pay me, you'll
do it without a bond, and if you ain't, I ain't goin' to sue you; I'm
jest goin' to think what a' o'nery cuss you are."

So Gordon returned home, and a few weeks later was delving deep into new
mysteries.

Gordon's college life may be passed over. He worked well, for he felt
that it was necessary to work.

Looking around when he left college, the only thing that appeared in
sight for Gordon Keith was to teach school. To be sure, the business;
"the universal refuge of educated indigents," as his father quoted with
a smile, was already overcrowded. But Gordon heard of a school which up
to this time had not been overwhelmed with applicants. There was a
vacancy at the Ridge College. Finally poor Gunn, after holding out as
long as he could, had laid down his arms, as all soldiers must do sooner
or later, and Gordon applied for the position. The old squire remembered
the straight, broad-shouldered boy with his father's eyes and also
remembered the debt he owed him, and with the vision of a stern-faced
man with eyes of flame riding quietly at the head of his men across a
shell-ploughed field, he wrote to Gordon to come.

"If he's got half of his daddy in him he'll straighten 'em out," he