CHAPTER V.
GRIM-VISAGED WAR.
It has been said that there were some twenty children in the school.
They were of various degrees and fortunes.

There were the sons and daughters of the land-owners, the pioneers, and there were the sons and daughters of the men who worked for them, mostly the drifting class, who occupied log houses on unclaimed ground and got flour or meal or potatoes for their services with the steadier or more masterful.

In the school, though, there were no distinctions on this account.

There were but two measurements of standing among girls and boys together, their relative importance in their classes, the teacher giving force to this, and among the boys alone the equation resulting from the issue of all personal encounter.

Boys will be boys, and our fighting Anglo-Saxon blood will tell.
There were Harrison Woodell and George Appleton and Frank Hoadly and Mortimer Butler, among the older boys; and, among the second growth, though varying somewhat in their ages, were Alf Maitland and Maurice Shannon and Grant Harlson, and three or four others who ranked with them.