X

"You'll begin to think you ain't there at all."[Illustration: "You'll begin to think you ain't there at all."]

Perry looked at me appealingly. Men hesitate to speak of love—except to women. He had already shown a frankness that was surprising, but then with a certain deftness he had placed me in the position of the sentimental one with a problem to solve. He was seeking for himself a solution of that problem, and was appealing to me to help him.

"Suppose again," said I, "that going another day to see the girl, I found her poring over a pile of books—all new books—just given her by this same arrogant interloper." Perry was silent, but when I paused and looked at him, I saw in his face that I was arguing along the right line. "Then the question arises, what shall I do?"

Perry nodded.

"What would you do?" he said. "That's it exact."

"I'd meet him at his own game," I answered.

"With what?" he asked.

"With what?" I repeated.

There was the rub! With what? I sat with my head clasped between my hands trying to answer him.

"With what?" I repeated, after a long silence.

"S'posin' I got her a wreath." Perry offered the suggestion, and in his enthusiasm he forgot that in our premise I was the person concerned; but I was not loath to let him take on himself the burden of our perplexity.

"Is she dead?" I asked.

"I needn't get one of that kind," he solemnly replied. "Somethin' in autumn leaves ought to be nice."

"You might do better."

"A hand-paintin', then," he ventured timidly.

I smiled on this with more approval.

"They have some be-yutiful ones at Hopedale," he said with more heart. "The last time I was down I was lookin' at 'em. They've fine gold frames and——"

"Why send her a picture of a tree when the finest oak in the valley is at her door?" I protested. "Why send her a picture of a slate-colored cow when a herd of Durhams pastures every day right under her eye?"

"That's true," Perry answered. "Hand-paintin's is meant for city folks. But what can a fellow get? A statue!" His eyes brightened. "That's just the thing—a statue of Washington or Lincoln or General Grant—how's that for an idee, Mark?"

"Excellent, if you are trying to make an impression on her uncle," I answered.

Perry shook his hands despairingly.

"You have come to a poor person at such business, Perry," said I. "What little I know of courting I have from books, and it seems to me that the usual thing is flowers—violets—roses."

My friend straightened up in his chair and gazed at me very long and hard. From me his eyes wandered to the calendar that hung behind my desk.

"November—November," he muttered. "A touch of snow too—and violets and roses."

He leaned toward me fiercely. "Violets come in May," he said. "This here is a matter of weeks."

"I'm serious, Perry," said I. "Books are the thing, and flowers; not wreaths and statues and paintings. You must send something that carries some sentiment with it."

He saw that I was in earnest, and his countenance became brighter.

"Geraniums," he muttered; thumping the table. "I'll get Mrs. Arker to let me have one of them window-plants of hers, and I'll put it in a new tomato-can and paint it. How's that for a starter?"

"I've never read about men sending geraniums," I replied. "It's odd, but I never have. I suppose the can makes them seem a little unwieldly. Still——"

"I had thought of forty-graph album." Perry spoke timidly again.

I had no mind to let him venture any more suggestions. His was too fickle a fancy, and I had settled on an easy solution of the problem. He was to send her a geranium. Somehow, I knew deep down in my own heart, ill versed as I was in such things, that I should never send her such a gift myself. I would climb to the top of Gander Knob for a wild rose or rhododendron; I would stir the leaves from the gap to the river in search of a simple spray of arbutus for her. But step before her with my arms clasping a tin can with a geranium plant r Heaven forbid! Perry was different. The suggestion pleased him. He was rubbing his hands and smiling in great contentment.

"I might send a po-em with it," he said. "I've allus found that poetry kind of catches ahold of a girl when you are away. It keeps you in her mind. It must be sing-song, though, kind of gettin' into her head like quinine. It must keep time with the splashin' of the churn and the howlin' of the wind. I mind when I was keepin' company with Rhoda Spiker—she afterward married Ulysses G. Harmon, of Hopedale—I sent her a po-em that run somethin' like this: 'I live, I love, my Life, my Light; long love I thou, Sweetheart so bright'——"

Perry's po-em never got into my brain, for as he repeated the captivating lines, I was gazing over his shoulder, out of the window, down the road to the village. I saw a girl on the store porch, standing by the door a moment as if undecided which way to go. Then she turned her head into the November gale and came rapidly up the road. In a minute more she would be passing the school-house door. Tim's letter was in my pocket and the sun was still high over the gable of the mill.

I saw a girl on the store porch.[Illustration: I saw a girl on the store porch.]

"Rhoda sent me a postal asking me to write her a po-em full of Ks or Xs or Ws, just so as she could get the Ls out of her head, and——"

"Perry!" I broke right into his story and seized the lapel of his waistcoat as though he were my dearest friend. "My girl is going by the school-house door this very minute. Now you help me. Take the school for the rest of the afternoon."

"Your girl?" cried Perry. His voice broke from the smothered conference tone and the school heard it and tittered. He recovered himself and poked me in the chest.

"Oh!" he said, "Widow Spoonholler—I seen you last Sunday singin' often the same book—I seen you. Hurry, Mark, hurry; and luck to you! You've done me most a mighty good turn."

Mary sat knitting. Beware of a woman who knits. The keenest lawyer in our county is not so clever a cross-examiner as his sister when she sits with her needles and yarn. Questions directed at one can be parried. You expect them and dodge. The woman knits and knits, and lulls you half to sleep, and then in a far-away voice asks questions. They come as a boon, a gracious acknowledgment that you exist, and though in her mind your place is secondary to the flying needles and the tangled worsted, still you are there and she is half listening to what you have to say. So you tell her twice as much as is wise. You have no interest for her. Her eyes are fixed on her work. She asks you the secret of your life, and then bends farther over, seeming to forget your existence. Desperate, you shout it at her, and she looks up and smiles, a wondering, distraught smile; then goes on knitting.

There were some things in Tim's letter that I did not intend to tell Mary. He had written to me in confidence. A man does not mind letting one of his fellows know that he is in love with a woman, but to let a woman know it is different. She will think him a fool, unless she is his inspiration. I knew Tim. I knew that he was no fool, and I did not wish her to get such an impression. I loved a pretty woman. So did Tim. But Mary would not understand it in Tim's case. That was why I folded the letter when I had read the first four pages.

But Mary was knitting. "It is fine to think he is getting along so well," she said.

She looked up, but not at me. Her face was turned to the window; her eyes were over the valley which was growing gray, for the sun was down. What she saw there I could not tell. A drearier sight is hard to find than our valley when the chill of the November evening is creeping over it as the fire in the west goes out. Night covers it, and it sleeps. But the winter twilight raises up its shadows. In the darkness all is hidden. In the half-light there is utter loneliness.

I turned from the window to the letter, and Mary looked at me for the first time in many minutes.

"Are you going to read the rest of the letter?" she demanded.

"You have heard 'most all of it," I replied evasively.

"And the rest?" she said.

"Is of no interest," I answered. "It's just a few personal, confidential things. Perhaps some time I can tell you."

"Oh," she exclaimed carelessly, and went on knitting, drawing closer to the lamplight.

"How long is it since he left?" she asked at last, reaching down to untangle the worsted from the end of the rocker.

"Six weeks," said I. "It's just six weeks coming to-morrow since Tim and I parted at Pleasantville. To think he has been promoted already! At that rate he should be head of the firm in a year or two."

"Mr. Weston has been very kind," said she. "Of course he has seen that Tim had every chance. He is the most thoughtful man I ever knew. He——"

Weston's excellent qualities were well known to me. I had discovered them long ago, and I did not care to hear Mary descant on them at length. He had done much for Tim, but it was what Tim had done for himself that I was proud of, so I interrupted her rather rudely.

"Yes, he got Tim his place; but you must remember Mr. Weston has hardly been in New York a day since the boy left. He doesn't bother much about business, so, after all, Tim is working his way alone."

"Yes," said Mary. She had missed a stitch somewhere, and it irritated her greatly. That was evident by the way she picked at it. She remedied the trouble somehow, recovered her composure, and went on knitting.

"Is it eight dollars he is making, did you say?" she asked.

"Yes, eight," I replied, verifying the figure with a glance at the letter.

"A week or a month?"

"A week. Just think of it—that is more than I got in the army."

But Mary was not a bit impressed. I remembered that she came from Kansas, and in Kansas a dollar is not so big as in our valley.

"Living is so expensive in the city," she said absently. "With eight dollars a week here Tim would be a millionaire. But in New York—" A shrug of the shoulder expressed her meaning.

"True," said I, a bit ruefully.

I had expected her to clasp her hands, to look up at me and listen to my stories of Tim's success, and hear my dreams for his future. Instead, she went on knitting, never once raising her eyes to me. It exasperated me. In sheer chagrin I took to silence and smoking. But she would not let me rest long this way, though I was slowly lulling myself into a state of semi-coma, of indifference to her and calm disdain.

"Of course Tim has made some friends," she said, glancing up from her work very casually.

"Of course he has," I snapped.

"That's nice," she murmured—knitting, knitting, knitting.

I expected her to ask who his friends were, and how he had made them. That was all in the letter. Moreover, it was in the part I had not read to her. But she abruptly abandoned this line of inquiry. She did not care. She let me smoke on.

Suddenly she dropped her work and asked, "Is that a footstep on the porch?"

"Footsteps! No—why, who did you think was coming?" I said.

"Mr. Weston promised to drop in on his way home from hunting—but I guess he'll disappoint me. I hoped it was he." She fell to her task again, only now she began to hum softly, thus shutting me off entirely.

For a very long while I endured it, but the time came when action of some kind was called for. We were not married, that I could sit forever smoking while she hummed. Even in Black Log, etiquette requires that a man talk to a woman when in her company; and when the woman ceases to listen, the wise man departs. That was just what I did not want to do, and only one alternative was left me. I got out the letter and held it under the light.

"You were asking about Tim's friends, Mary," said I.

"Was I?" she returned. "I had forgotten. What did I say?"

"You asked if he had made any friends," I replied, as calmly as I could. "I was going to read you what he said."

"Oh!" she cried. And at last she dropped her knitting, and resting her elbows on her knees, clasping her chin in her hands, she looked up at me from her low chair. "I thought it was forbidden," she said.

"Tim didn't say anything about not reading it," I answered. "At first, though, it seemed best not to; but you'll understand, Mary. Of course, we mustn't take him too seriously, but it does sound foolish. Poor Tim!"

"Poor Tim!" repeated the girl. "He must be in love."

"He is," said I.

"Then don't read it!" she cried. "Surely he never intended you to read it to me."

"Of course he did," I laughed, for at last I had aroused her, and now her infernal knitting was forgotten; she no longer strained her ears for Weston's footfalls. Her eyes were fixed on me. "Poor old Tim! Well, let's wish him luck, Mary. Now listen."

So I read her the forbidden pages.

"'You should see Edith Parker, Mark. She is so different from the girls of Black Log. Her father is head book-keeper in the store, and he has been very good to me. Last week he took me home to dinner with him. He has a nice house in Brooklyn. His wife is dead, and he has just his daughter. We have no women in Black Log that compare to her. She is tall and slender and has fair hair and blue eyes.'"

"I hate fair-haired women," broke in Mary with some asperity. "They are so vain."

"I agree with you," said I. "That is invariably the case, and dark hair is so much more beautiful; but we must make allowance for Tim. Let us see—'fair hair and blue eyes and the sweetest face'—I do believe that brother of mine is out of his head to write such stuff."

"He certainly is," said Mary, very quietly.

"Poor Tim! But go on."

"'We played cards together for a while, till old Mr. Parker went asleep in his chair, and then Edith and I had a chance to talk. You know, Mark, I've always been a bit afraid of women, and awkward and ill at ease around them. But Edith is different from the girls of Black Log. We were friends in a minute. You don't know what it is to talk to these girls who have been everywhere, and seen everything, and know everything. They are so much above you, they inspire you. For a girl like that no sacrifice a man can make is too great. To win a girl like that a man must do something and be something. Now up in Black Log——'"

"Yes, up in Black Log the women are different," said Mary in a quiet voice. "They have to work in Black Log, and it's the men they work for. If they sat on thrones and talked wisdom and looked beautiful, the kitchen-fires would die out and the children go naked."

"Tim doesn't say anything disparaging to the people of our valley," I protested. "He says, 'in Black Log the girls don't understand how to dress. They deck themselves out in gaudy finery. Now Edith wears the simplest things. You never notice her gown. You only see her figure and her face.'"

"Do I deck myself out in gaudy finery, Mark?" Mary's appeal was direct and simple.

A shake of the head was my only answer. I wanted to tell her that Tim was blind. I wanted to tell her the boy was a fool; that Edith, the tall, thin, pale creature, was not to be compared to one woman in our valley; that I know who that woman was; that I loved her. I would have told her this. With a sudden impulse I leaned toward her. As suddenly I fell back. My crutches had clattered to the floor!

A battered veteran! A pensioner! A back-woods pedagogue! That I was. That I must be to the end. My place was in the school-house. My place was on the store bench, set away there with a lot of other broken antiquities. That I should ask a woman to link her life with mine, was absurd. A fair ship on a fair sea soon parts company with a derelict—unless it tows it. A score of times I had fought this out, and as often I had found but one course and had set myself to follow it, but there was that in Mary's quiet eyes that shook my resolution. There was an appeal there, and trust.

"I am glad, anyway, I am not so much above you, Mark," she said, now laughing.

I gathered up my crutches and the letter. I gathered up my wits again.

"There's where I feel like Tim, indeed," I said.

"I don't think I should like this lofty Edith," the girl exclaimed. "What a pompous word it is—Edith! Tim is ambitious. I suppose he rolls that name over and over in his mind."

It seemed that Mary was unnecessarily sharp toward a young woman she had never seen and of whom she had as yet heard nothing but good. While for myself I felt a certain resentment at Tim for his praise of this girl and the condescending references to my misfortune in never having seen her like, I had for him a certain keen sympathy and hope for his success. I had a certain sympathy for Edith, too, for a man in love, if unrestrained in his praise, will make a plain, sensible, motherly girl look like a frivolous fool. Perhaps in this case Edith was the victim. I suggested this to Mary, and she laughed softly.

"Perhaps so," she said. "But I must admit it irritates me to see our Tim lose his head over a stranger. I can only picture her as he does—a superior being, who lives in Brooklyn, whose name is Edith, and who wears her hair in a small knot on top of her head. Can you conceive her smile, Mark, if she saw us now—if this fine Brooklyn girl with her city ways dropped down here in Black Log?"

"That's all in Tim's letter," I cried. "Listen. 'She asked all about my home and you. I told her of the place and of all the people, of Mary and Captain. Last night I took over that picture of you in your uniform, and I won't tell you all the nice things she said about you, and——'"

"She's a flatterer," cried Mary.

"I am beginning to love her myself," said I. "But listen to Tim. 'She told me she hoped to see Black Log some day, and to meet the soldier of the valley. I said that I hoped she would, too, but I didn't tell her that a hundred times a day, as I worked over the books in the office, I vowed that soon I'd take her there myself.'"

"As Mrs. Tim," Mary added, for I was folding up the letter.

"As Mrs. Tim, evidently," said I. "Poor old Tim! It's a very bad case."

"Poor old Tim!" said Mary.

She took up her needles and her work, and fell to knitting.

"I suppose they must be very rich—the Parkers, I mean." This was offered as a wedge to break the silence, for the needles were going very rapidly now, and the stitches seemed to call for the closest watching.

"Yes," said Mary.

I lighted my pipe again.

"What a grand man Tim will be when he comes back home." I suggested this after a long silence. "He'll look fine in his city clothes, for somehow those city men do dress differently from us country chaps. Now just picture Tim in a—in a——"

Mary was humming softly to herself.

The county paper always comes on Thursday. This was Thursday. Elmer Spiker sat behind the stove, in a secluded corner, the light of the lamp on the counter falling over his left shoulder on the leading column of locals. Elmer was reading. There was a store rule forbidding him to read aloud, which caused him much hardship, for as he worked his way slowly down the column, his right eye and left ear kept twitching and twitching as though trying to keep time with his lips.

Josiah Nummler's long pole rested on the counter at his side, and his great red hands were spread out to drink in the heat from the glowing bowl of the stove.

"It's a-blowin' up most a-mighty, ain't it?" he said, cheerfully. "Any news, Elmer?"

"Oh now, go home," grunted Mr. Spiker, rolling his pipe around so the burning tobacco scattered over his knees. "See what you've done!" he snapped angrily, brushing away the sparks.

"I didn't notice you was in the middle of a word, Elmer, really I didn't," pleaded old Mr. Nummler.

"I wasn't in the middle of a word," retorted Elmer, as he drove his little finger into his pipe in an effort to save some of the tobacco. "I was just beginnin' a new piece. Things is gittin' so there ain't a place left in this town for a man to read in peace and comfort. Here I am, tryin' to post up on the local doin's, on polytics and religion, and ringin' in my ears all the time is 'lickin' the teacher, lickin' the teacher, lickin' the teacher.' S'pose every man here did lick the teacher in his time—what of it, I says, what of it?"

"Yes, what of it?" said I, closing the door with a bang.

I was plodding home from Mary's. She had hummed me out at last, and I had tucked Tim's letter in my pocket and hobbled back to the village. The light in the store had drawn me aside and I stopped a moment just to look in. The store is always a fascinating place. There is always something doing there, and I opened the door a crack to hear what was under discussion. Catching the same refrain that troubled Elmer Spiker, I entered.

"What of it?" I demanded, facing the company. "I don't believe there is a man here who ever thrashed the teacher."

Theophilus Jones raised himself from the counter on which he was leaning, and waved a lighted candle above his head.

"Here comes the teacher—make way for the teacher!"

Josiah Nummler pounded the floor with his long pole.

"See the conquerin' hero comes," he cried. "A place for him—a place for him!" And with the point of his stick he drove the six men on the bench so close together as to give me an excellent seat.

"Thrice welcome, noble he-ro, as Perry Thomas says!" shouted Aaron Kallaberger, thrusting his hand into his bosom in excellent imitation of the orator.

"He's lookin' pretty spry yet, ain't he, boys?" said Isaac Bolum. He stood before me, leaning over till his hands clasped his knees, and peered into my face, smiling. "The teacher ain't changed a bit."

"Thank you for the reception," said I. "But explain. What's this all about?"

Elmer Spiker folded the county paper and came around to our side of the stove. There he struck his favorite attitude, which was always made most effective by the endless operation of putting his spectacles in their case—pulling them out—waving them—ad infinitum. For in our valley spectacles are the sceptre of the sovereign intellect.

"They was talkin' about lickin' the teacher," Elmer said, "and sech talkin' I never heard. It was the nonsensicalest yet. The way them boys was tellin' about the teachers they had knowed made me feel for your life when I seen you come in. I thought they'd fall on you like so many wolves."

"Now see here, Elmer Spiker," shouted Henry Holmes, "that's an injestice. I never said I'd licked the teacher when I was a boy. I only said I'd tried it."

"You give me to understand that the teacher was dead now," returned Elmer severely.

"He is," cried Henry.

"And you claim you done it."

"I done it," shouted Mr. Holmes, pounding the floor with his cane. "I done it! You think I'm a murderer? Why, old Gilbert Spoonholler was ninety-seven year old when he went away. He was only forty when him and me had it out."

"That's different," said Elmer calmly. "I understood from your original account that he died in battle."

"I tho't so too, Henery," put in Isaac Bolum. "You misled me, complete. 'Here,' says I, 'at last I have met a man who has licked the teacher.' And all the time you was tellin' about it, we was admirin' you—Joe Nummler and me—and now we finds Gil Spoonholler lived fifty-seven year after that terrible struggle."

"I can't just fetch my memory back to that particular incident, Henery," said Josiah, "but my recollection is that Gil Spoonholler held the school-house agin all comers, and that's sayin' a good deal, for we was tough as hickory when we was young."

"The modern boys is soft," Aaron Kallaberger declared. "They regards the teacher in a friendlier light than they used to. They are weakenin'. The military sperrit's dyin' out. The spectacle is conquerin' the sword."

Aaron Kallaberger.[Illustration: Aaron Kallaberger.]

This was too direct a slap at Elmer Spiker to pass unnoticed; Elmer was too old an arguer to use any ponderous weapon in return. He even smiled as he punctuated his sentences with his battered spectacle-case.

"You never said a truer word, Aaron. It allus was true. It allus will be true. It's just as true to-day as when Henery Holmes tackled old Gilbert Spoonholler, as when Isaac Bolum yander argyed with Luke Lampson that five times eleven was forty-five; as when you refused to admit to the same kind teacher that Harrisburg was the capital of Pennsylwany."

"And as to-day when William Belkis—" Theophilus Jones was acting strangely. He was bowing politely at me.

I was mystified. Why at a time like this I should be treated as a subject of so much distinction was a puzzle, and I was about to demand an explanation, when Josiah Nummler interrupted.

"It's true," he said. "Teachers ain't changed and the boys ain't changed. I'm eighty year old within a week, and all my life I've heard boys blowin' about how they was goin' to lick the teacher, and I've heard old men tell how they done it years and years before—but I've never seen an eye-witness—what I wants is an eye-witness."

"You've been talkin' to Elmer Spiker," said Henry Holmes, plaintively. "He's convinced you. He'd convince anybody of anything. He's got me so dad-twisted I can't mind no more whether I went to school even."

"You never showed no signs, Henery." Isaac Bolum spoke very quietly.

"I guess you otter know it as well as anybody," Henry retorted angrily. "Your ma was allus askin' me to take care of you, and you was a nuisance, too, you was, Isaac. You was allus a-blubberin' and a-swallerin' somethin'. You mind the time you swallered my copper cent, don't you? You mind the fuss your ma made to my ma about it, don't you? Why, she formulated regular charges that I 'tempted to pizon you—she did, and——"

"Don't rake up them old, old sores," said Josiah Nummler soothingly, "Ike'll give you back your copper cent, Henery."

"All Ike's property to-day ain't as val'able to me now as that cent was then," Mr. Holmes answered solemnly. "It was the val'ablest cent I ever owned. I never expect to have another I'd hate so to see palpitatin' in Isaac Bolum's th'oat between his Adam's apple and his collar-band."

"We're gittin' away from the subject," said Josiah. "You're draggin' up a personal quarrel between you and Isaac Bolum, when we was discussin' the great problem that confronts every scholar in his day—that of thrashin' the teacher."

"It's a problem no scholar ever solved in the history of this walley, anyway," declared Elmer Spiker.

"It ain't on the records," said Kallaberger.

"There are le-gends," Isaac Bolum said. He pointed at Henry Holmes with his thumb. "Sech as his."

"Yes," said Josiah Nummler, "we have sech le-gends, comin' mostly from the Indians and Henery Holmes. But there's one I got from my pap when I was a boy, and I allus thought it one of the most be-yutiful fairy stories I ever heard—of course exceptin' them in the Bible. It was about Six Stars school, here, and the boy's name was Ernest, and the teacher's Leander. It was told to my pap by his pap, so you can see that as a le-gend it was older than them of Henery Holmes."

"It certainly sounds more interestin'," exclaimed Isaac Bolum.

Old Mr. Holmes started to protest, but Aaron Kallaberger quieted him with an offering of tobacco. By the time his pipe was going, Josiah was well into his story.

"Of all the teachers that ever tot in Six Stars this here Leander was the most fe-rocious. He was six foot two inches tall in his stockin's, and weighed no more than one hundred and thirty pound, stripped, but he was wiry. His arms was like long bands of iron. His legs was like hickory saplin's, and when he wasn't usin' them he allus kept them wound round the chair, so as to unspring 'em at a moment's notice and send himself flyin' at the darin' scholar. His face was white and all hung with hanks of black hair; his eyes was one minute like still intellectual pools and the next like burnin' coals of fire—that was my pap's way of puttin' it. Ernest was just his opposite. He was a chunky boy with white hair and pale eyes. He was a nice boy when let alone, but in the whole fifteen years of his life he'd never had no call to bound Kansas or tell the capital of Californy outside of school hours, so he regarded Leander with a fierce and childlike hatred. But Ernest had a noble streak in him, too. For himself he would 'a' suffered in silence. It was the constant oppression of the helpless little ones that saddened him. It was maddenin' to have to sit silent every day while tiny girls, no older than ten, was being hounded from one end of the g'ography to the other. He seen small boys, shavers under eight, scratchin' holes in their heads with slate-pencils, tryin' to make out why two and two was four; he seen girls, be-yutiful young girls of his own age, drove almost to distraction by black-boards full of diagrams from the grammar-book. And allus before him, the inspirin' note of the whole systematic system of torturin' the young, was the rod; broodin' over it all, like a black cloud, was Leander's repytation, was the memory of the boys as had gone before. For years Ernest bore all this. Then come a time when he was called to a position of responsibility in the school. One after another, the biggest boys had fallen. A few had gradyeated. Others had argyed with the teacher and become as broken reeds, was stedyin' regular and bein' polite like. In them years, whether he wanted it or not, Ernest had rose up. His repytation was spotless. His age entitled him to the Fifth Reader class, but he was still spellin' out words in the Third; fractions was only a dream to him, and he couldn't 'a' told you the difference between a noun and a wild carrot. But through it all he'd been so humble and polite that Leander looked on him as a kind of half-witted lamb."

Leander.[Illustration: Leander.]

"This here is the longest fairy story I ever heard tell of," said Elmer Spiker, "We haven't even had a sign of the prin-cess."

"And there is a prin-cess in this here le-gend," returned Josiah. "She was a be-yutiful one, too. Her name was Pinky Binn, a dotter of the house of Binn, the Binns of Turkey Walley. She had the reddish hair of the Binns and the pearl-blue eyes of the Rummelsbergers from over the mountains. Her ma was a Rummelsberger. She wasn't too spare, nor was she too fleshy; she was just rounded right; and when she smiled—ah, boys, when Pinky Binn smiled at Ernest from behind her g'ography his heart went like its spring had broke. Yet he never showed it. It would have been ruination for him to let it be known by sign or act that Pinky Binn was other than the general class of weemen; for is there anything worse than weemen in general? It's the exceptions, allus the exceptions, raises trouble with a man. Pinky Binn was Ernest's exception. But the time of his great trial come, and he was true. He stepped forth in his right light before all the school; he showed himself what he was—the gentle lover, the masterful fighter, the heroic-est scholar Six Stars school had ever seen."

"Her name was Pinky Binn, a dotter of the house of Binn, the Binns of Turkey Walley."[Illustration: "Her name was Pinky Binn, a dotter of the house of Binn, the Binns of Turkey Walley."]

"He whipped the teacher, I know," cried Henry Holmes. "I told you, Ike—he licked the teacher."

"This here is a fairy story, Henery," returned Isaac reprovingly.

"Even in a fairy story it 'ud be ridiculous to let a boy of fifteen beat a trained teacher," said Josiah Nummler. "He didn't quite, and it come this way. Leander asked Pinky Binn if he had eleven apples and multiplied them by five how many was they left. She says sixty-five. 'Figure it out agin,' he says, wery stern. So she works her fingers and her lips a-while, like she was deef and dumb. 'Five-timsone is five,' she says, 'and five-timsone agin is five and one to carry is six—sixty-five,' she says. 'Well, I'll be Scotch-Irished,' says Leander gittin' wery angry. 'Sech obtusety' (Leander allus used fancy words) 'is worthy of Ernest yander.' He pinted his long finger at Ernest and says, 'How much is five times eleven apples? Ernest gits up and faces the teacher, wery ca'am and wery quiet. 'Sixty-five,' says he. 'It's fifty-five,' Leander shouts. Then says Ernest, wery cool, 'Pinky Binn says it's sixty-five, and Pinky Binn ain't no storyteller, and you hadn't otter call her one.' That takes all the talk out of the teacher. He just sets there wrappin' his legs round the chair and glarin'. Ernest's voice rings clear above the school now, like the Declaration of Independence. 'In Turkey Walley, teacher,' he says, 'five times eleven apples is sixty-five. They raises bigger apples there.'

"Leander's legs unsprung. He ketched Ernest by the hair and lifted him to the platform. Boys, you otter 'a' seen it. It was David and Goliath all over agin, only fightin' fair. Havin' Leander holdin' his hair give the boy an advantage—it was two hands agin one. Leander had but the one to operate his stick with, while Ernest was drivin' both fists right into the darkness in front of him. The stick was making no impression, and some of the small boys that didn't know no better begin to cheer. Boys, you otter 'a' been there. You'd have enjoyed it, Henery. Leander seen what he needed was tactics, and his regular tactics was to hold the scholar at arm's length by the hair. He tried it and it didn't work. Ernest was usin' tactics too. He wasn't wastin' strength and beatin' his arms around. He just smiled. That smile aroused the teacher in Leander agin. He couldn't stand it. He had never had a boy do that before; he forgot himself and sailed in. Boys, that was fightin' then. You'd have enjoyed it, Henery. Still, I guess it couldn't have been much to watch, for there was nothin' to see but dust—a rollin', roarin' cloud of it, backward and forward over the platform. I don't know just what happened. Pap couldn't tell. Leander couldn't 'a' told you. Ernest couldn't 'a' told you. There was war—real war, and after it come peace."

"Ernest whipped, I know," cried Henry Holmes.

"The teacher was licked—good—good!" shouted Isaac Bolum.

"No, boys," said Josiah solemnly, "that couldn't have been. Even in fairy stories sech things couldn't happen. But when the dust cleared away, Leander's body lay along the floor, and towerin' over him, one foot on his boosom, stood the darin' scholar. I guess the teacher had been took ill."

"Mebbe it was appleplexy," suggested Elmer Spiker.

"Mebbe it was," said Josiah. "It must have been somethin' like that; but whatever it was, there stood the boy. 'You is free,' he says, addressin' the scholars. And the children broke from the seats and started for'a'd to worship him. And Pinky Binn was almost on her knees at his feet, when a strange thing happened.

"There was music. It come soft first, and hushed the school, and froze the scholars like statutes. Louder it come and louder—a heavenly choir—the melodium, the cordine, and the fiddle. Then a great white light flooded the school-room. It blinded the boys, and it blinded the girls. The music played softer and softer—the melodium, the cordine, and the fiddle—and with it, keepin' time with it, the light come softer, too; so lookin' up the scholars seen there in the celestial glow, a solemn company gethered round the boy—the he-roes of old—Hercules and General Grant, Joshuay and Washington—all the mighty fighters of history. Just one glimpse the scholars had, for the music struck up louder, and the light glowed brighter and brighter till it blinded them. Softer and softer the music come—the melodium, the cordine, and the fiddle. It sounded like marchin', they said, and they heard the tramp, tramp, tramp of the sperrit soldiers. Then there was quiet—only the roarin' of the stove and the snuffin' of the little ones. And when they looked up Leander was alone—settin' there on the platform, kind of rubbin' his eyes—alone."

There was silence in the store. Josiah Nummler's pipe was going full blast, and while the white cloud hid him from the others, I could see a gentle smile on his fat face.

"Mighty son's!" cried Henry Holmes, "that there's unpossible."

Josiah planted his pole on the floor and lifted himself to his feet.

"It's only a fairy story, Henery," he said.

"What does it illustrate?" cried Aaron Kallaberger. "Nothin', I says. We was talkin' about Mark and William Bellus, and you switches off on Leander and Ernest. To a certain pint your story agrees with what my boy told me of the doin's in the school this afternoon."

"What doing's?" I exclaimed. This talk puzzled me, and I was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.

"Why, wasn't you there?" cried Isaac Bolum. "Wasn't it you and William?"

"No," I fairly shouted. "Perry Thomas had the school."

Josiah Nummler's pole clattered to the floor, and he sank into a chair.

"I see—I see," he gasped. "Poor William!"

"I see—I see," said I. "Poor William!"

For William had felt the hand of "Doogulus!"

William had felt the hand of "Doogulus."[Illustration: William had felt the hand of "Doogulus."]

It was young Colonel's first day of life. He had been born six months before, but for him that had been simply the beginning of existence. Now he was to live. He was to go with Captain, and with Betsy his mother, with Arnold Arker's Mike and Major, the best of his breed, to learn to take the trail and follow it, singing as he ran.

It was young Colonel's first day of life. He was out in the great dog world, and about him were the mighty hunters of the valley. Arnold Arker was there with his father's rifle, once a flint-lock, always a piece of marvellous accuracy, and a hero as guns go, and the old man patted the puppy and pulled his silky ears. Tip Pulsifer approved of him. Tip shut one eye and gazed at him long and earnestly; he ran his bony fingers down the slender back to the very end of the agitated tail. One by one he took the heavy paws in his hands and stroked them. Then Tip smiled. Murphy Kallaberger smiled too, and declared that the young un took after his pa; clarifying this explanation he pointed his fat thumb over his shoulder to old Captain, beating around the underbrush.

It was young Colonel's first day of life. And what a day to live, I thought, as I stroked his head and wished him luck! He could not get it into his puppy brain that I was to wait there while the others went racing down the slope into the wooded basin below, so he lingered, to sit before me on his haunches, his head cocked to one side, eyeing me inquisitively. There was a tang in the air. The wind was sweeping along the ridge-top and the woods were shivering. All about us rattled Nature's bones, in the stirring leaves, in the falling pig-nuts, in the crash of the belated birds through the leafless branches. The sun was over us, and as I looked up to drink with my eyes of the warm light, I was taking a draught of God's best wine from off yonder in the north, of the wine that quickens the blood and drives away the brain-clouds. A day of days this was to race over the ridges while the music of the hounds rang through them; a day of days to dash from thicket to thicket, over the hills and through the hollows, leaping logs and vaulting fences, with every sense keyed to the highest; for the fox is a clever general. So young Colonel was puzzled, for there I was on a log, at the crest of the ridge, with my crutches at one side and my gun at the other, when I should be away after old Captain, the real leader of the sport, after Arnold and Tip and Betsy. This was the best I could do, to sit here and listen and hope—listen as the chase went swinging along the ridges; hope that a kind fate and an unwise Reynard would bring them where I could add the bark of my rifle to the song of the hounds. You can't explain everything to a dog. With a puppy it is still harder. So Colonel was restless. He looked anxiously down the hill; then he lifted those soft, slantwise eyes to mine very wistfully.

"Go, Colonel," I commanded, pointing to the hollow.

Instead, he came to me and lifted to my knee one of those ponderous feet of his, and tried to pull me from my log.

"Aren't you coming?" he seemed to say.

"No, old chap," I answered, pulling the long ears gently till he smiled. "I prefer it here where I can look over the valley, and from here I can see where Mary lives—down yonder on the hillside; that's the house by the clump of oaks, where the smoke is curling up so thick."

The slantwise eyes became grave, and the long tail paused. The second ponderous paw came crashing on my knee.

"Aren't you coming?" young Colonel seemed to say.

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