t the
Simmses were the only pupils in the school who had ever seen in use that
supposedly-obsolete harvesting implement, the cradle. Buddy's essay had
been passed over to the class in United States history as the evidence of
an eye-witness concerning farming conditions in our grandfathers' times.

The surnameless Pete, Colonel Woodruff's hired man, halted Buddy at the
door.

"Mr. Simms, I believe?" he said.

"I reckon you must be lookin' for my brother, Raymond, suh," said Buddy.

"I am a-lookin'," said Pete impressively, "for Mr. McGeehee Simms."

"That's me," said Buddy; "but I hain't been doin' nothin' wrong, suh!"

"I have a message here," said Pete, "for Professor James E. Irwin. He's
what-ho within, there, ain't he?"

"He's inside, I reckon," said Buddy.

"Then will you be so kind and condescendin' as to stoop so low as to jump
so high as to give him this letter?" asked Pete.

Buddy took the letter and was considering of his reply to this remarkable
speech, when Pete, gravely saluting, passed on, rather congratulating
himself on having staged a very good burlesque of the dignified manners of
those queer mountaineers, the Simmses.

"Please come to the meeting to-night," ran the colonel's note to Jim;
"and when you come, come prepared to hold the district up. If we
can't meet the Pottawatomie County standard of wages, we ought to
lose you. Everybody in the district will be there. Come late, so you
won't hear yourself talked about--I should recommend nine-thirty and
war-paint."

It was a crisis, no doubt of that; and the responsibility of the situation
rather sickened Jim of the task of teaching. How could he impose
conditions on the whole school district? How could the colonel expect such
a thing of him? And how could any one look for anything but scorn for the
upstart field-hand from these men who had for so many years made him the
butt of their good-natured but none the less contemptuous ridicule? Who
was he, anyway, to lay down rules for these substantial and successful
men--he who had been for all the years of his life at their command,
subservient to their demands for labor--their underling? Only one thing
kept him from dodging the whole issue and remaining at home--the colonel's
matter-of-fact assumption that Jim had become master of the situation. How
could he flee, when this old soldier was fighting so valiantly for him in
the trenches? So Jim went to the meeting.

The season was ne