y broken by a decided-looking red-haired man, who
had been neatly beveling the door-post with his knife, and who spoke as
if his words only by great difficulty escaped being bitten in two.

"We ken burn down the schoolhouse right before his face and eyes, and
then mebbe the State Board'll git our idees about eddycation."

"Twon't be no use, Mose," said Judge Barber, whose legal title was
honorary, and conferred because he had spent some time in a penitentiary
in the East. "Them State Board fellers is wrong, but they've got grit,
ur they'd never hev got the schoolhouse done after we rode the
contractor out uv the Flat on one of his own boards. Besides, some uv
'em might think we wuz rubbin' uv it in, an' next thing you know'd
they'd be buildin' us a jail."

"Can't we buy off these young uns' folks?" queried an angular fellow
from Southern Illinois. "They're a mizzable pack of shotes, an' I
b'leeve they'd all leave the camp fur a few ounces."

"Ye--es," drawled the judge, dubiously; "but thar's the Widder
Ginneys--_she'd_ pan out a pretty good schoolroom-full with her eight
young uns, an' there ain't ounces enough in the diggin's to make _her_
leave while Tom Ginneys's coffin's roostin' under the rocks."

"Then," said Mose, the first speaker, his words escaping with even more
difficulty than before, "throw around keards to see who's to marry the
widder, an' boss her young uns. The feller that gits the fust Jack's to
do the job."

"Meanin' no insult to this highly respectable crowd," said the judge, in
a very bland tone, and inviting it to walk up to the bar and specify its
consolation, "I don't b'leeve there's one uv yer the widder'd hev." The
judge's eye glanced along the line at the bar, and he continued softly,
but in decided accents--"Not a cussed one. But," added the judge,
passing his pouch to the barkeeper, "if anything's to be done, it must
be done lively, fur the stage is pretty nigh here. Tell ye what's ez
good ez ennything. We'll crowd around the stage, fust throwin' keards
for who's to put out his hoof to be accidently trod onto by the infernal
teacher ez he gits out. Then satisfaction must be took out uv the
teacher. It'll be a mean job, fur these teachers hevn't the spunk of a
coyote, an' ten to one he won't hev no shootin' irons, so the job'll hev
to be done with fists."

"Good!" said Mose. "The crowd drinks with me to a square job, and no
backin'. Chuck the pasteboards, jedge--The--dickens!" For Mos