was so sudden and so senseless that "Dodd" essayed no
answer. This was Amos's opportunity.

He waved his stick again--the same being one of the narrow slats that
had been torn from one of the double seats in the room, a strip of wood
two inches wide, an inch thick, and nearly four feet long--and swinging
it within an inch of the boy's nose, he shouted again: "The book says
that the Indian leaned against a tree.' What does that mean? Answer
me!" and again he made the passes and swung the slat.

"I don't know," answered "Dodd," just a little frightened.

It was a little, but it was enough. Amos felt that he had Parson
Weaver on the hip and he hastened to make the most of his advantage.

"Do you mean to say that you don't know what it is to lean against a
tree? Why, where was you raised? What kind o' folks hev you got?
Your old man must be mighty smart to raise a boy as big as you be, an'
not learn him what it means to lean ag'in' a tree."

It was a savage thrust and it drew blood from the boy.

"My dad may not be very smart," he retorted, fully forgetting the "lone
Indian," "but he's got gall enough to pound the stuffin' out o' such a
rooster as you be."

There was a sensation in the little school room, a dead pause, so still
that the little clock on the desk seemed to rattle like a factory, as
it hit off the anxious seconds of the strife it was forced to witness.

This speech of "Dodd's" was almost too many for Amos. It smote him in
his weakest part, and for a moment he was daunted, but he rallied, and
with a few wild brandishes of the slat he felt that he was himself
again, and once more led on to the fray.

"See here, young man, you mustn't talk to me like that! Don't you give
me none of your Methodist lip" (Amos was not a Methodist, and, though a
candidate for the ministry, he cordially hated all outside his own
denomination), "or I'll make you wish you'd never saw deestrick four.
Now tell me what it means to 'lean ag'in' a tree,'" and he glared at
the boy and waved the slat again.

"Why, it means to lean up against it," returned "Dodd," who was bound
to do his best. "That's what I think it means; what do you think it
means?"

The tables were turned, and Amos almost caught his breath at the
dilemma.

"What do I think it means?" he retorted; "what do I think it means?
Why, it means--it means--it means what it says; that he leaned ag'in'
the tree, that is, that he assumed a recumbent posture ag'i