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.