ful in its precision, points
to the body of old Mr. Lemuel Shackford, who lies there dead in his
night-dress, with a gash across his forehead.

In the darkness of that summer night a deed darker than the night
itself had been done in Stillwater.

II

THE FIGHT AT SLATTER'S HILL[58]

The memory of man, even that of the oldest inhabitant runneth not back
to the time when there did not exist a feud between the North End and
the South End boys of Rivermouth.

[Footnote 58: From Chapter XIII of "The Story of a Bad Boy."
Copyright, 1869, 1877, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Published by
Houghton, Mifflin Company.]

The origin of the feud is involved in mystery; it is impossible to say
which party was the first aggressor in the far-off anterevolutionary ages;
but the fact remains that the youngsters of those antipodal sections
entertained a mortal hatred for each other, and that this hatred had been
handed down from generation to generation, like Miles Standish's
punch-bowl.

I know not what laws, natural or unnatural, regulated the warmth of
the quarrel; but at some seasons it raged more violently than at
others. This winter both parties were unusually lively and
antagonistic. Great was the wrath of the South-Enders when they
discovered that the North-Enders had thrown up a fort on the crown of
Slatter's Hill.

Slatter's Hill, or No-man's-land, as it was generally called, was a
rise of ground covering, perhaps, an acre and a quarter, situated on
an imaginary line marking the boundary between the two districts. An
immense stratum of granite, which here and there thrust out a wrinkled
boulder, prevented the site from being used for building purposes. The
street ran on either side of the hill, from one part of which a
quantity of rock had been removed to form the underpinning of the new
jail. This excavation made the approach from that point all but
impossible, especially when the ragged ledges were a-glitter with ice.
You see what a spot it was for a snow-fort.

One evening twenty or thirty of the North-Enders quietly took
possession of Slatter's Hill, and threw up a strong line of
breastworks. The rear of the entrenchment, being protected by the
quarry, was left open. The walls were four feet high, and twenty-two
inches thick, strengthened at the angles by stakes driven firmly into
the ground.

Fancy the rage of the South-Enders the next day, when they spied our
snowy citadel, with Jack Harris's red silk pock