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."

[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