She understood at once that Twing had slipped out into a janitor's room in the rear, where he had evidently forced an interview and explanation from his interrupter, and now had been waiting for the audience to disperse before emerging by the front door.

They had evidently overlooked her in the shadow.
"But," said the stranger, as if following an aggrieved line of apology, "if Barstow knew who you were, and what you'd done, and still thought you good enough to rastle round here and square up them Pike County fellers and them kids--what in thunder do you care if the others DO find you out, as long as Barstow sticks to you ?" "I've told you why, Dick," returned Twing gloomily.
"Oh, the schoolma'am!" "Yes, she's a saint, an angel.

More than that--she's a lady, Dick, to the tip of her fingers, who knows nothing of the world outside a parson's study.

She took me on trust--without a word--when the trustees hung back and stared.

She's never asked me about myself, and now when she knows who and what I have been--she'll loathe me!" "But look here, Jim," said the stranger anxiously.