travel a long way, elder,
before you find any people of that kind, Injuns or white folks. I know.
I haven't lived fifty years in this troublesome world for nothin'.
People who live up in the air, as you do, elder, have to come down. I'm
sorry. You mean well!"

Johnnie Kongapod arose, lifted his brown arm silently, and, bending his
earnest face on Jasper, said:

"_That_ story is true. You will know. Time tells the truth. Wait!"

"Return in the morning to be shot!" said Aunt Olive. "Injuns don't do
that way here. When I started for Injiany I was told of a mother-in-law
who was so good that all her daughters' husbands asked her to come and
live with them. They said she moved to Injiany. Now, I have traveled
about this State to all the camp-meetin's, and I never found her
anywhere. Stands to reason that no such story as that is true. You'll
have to travel a long way, elder, before you find any people of that
kind in these parts."

Whom was Jasper to believe--the confident Indian or the pioneers?

CHAPTER VII.

THE EXAMINATION AT CRAWFORD'S SCHOOL.

Examination-day is an important time in country schools, and it excited
more interest seventy years ago than now. Andrew Crawford was always
ambitious that this day should do credit to his faithful work, and his
pupils caught his inspiration.

There were great preparations for the examination at Crawford's this
spring. The appearance of the German school-master in the place who
could read Latin was an event. Years after, when the pure gold of fame
was no longer a glimmering vision or a current of fate, but a wonderful
fact, Abraham Lincoln wrote of such visits as Jasper's in the settlement
a curious sentence in an odd hand in an autobiography, which we
reproduce here:

[Illustration: If a straggler ^{supposed to understand latin?} happened
to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard--]

With such a "wizard" as Jasper in the settlement, who would certainly
attend the examination, it is no wonder that this special event excited
the greatest interest in all the cabins between the two Pigeon Creeks of
southern Indiana.

"May we decorate the school-house?" asked a girl of Mr. Crawford, before
the appointed day. "May we decorate the school-house out of the woods?"

"I am chiefly desirous that you should decorate your minds out of the
spelling-book," said Mr. Crawford; "but it is a commendable thing to
have an eye to beauty, and to desire to p