he excitement was so great for some minutes that
the spelling was suspended. Everybody in the house had shown sympathy
with one or the other of the combatants, except the silent shadow in the
corner. It had not moved during the contest, and did not show any
interest now in the result.

"Gewhilliky crickets! Thunder and lightning! Licked him all to smash!"
said Bud, rubbing his hands on his knees. "That beats my time all
holler!"

And Betsey Short giggled until her tuck-comb fell out, though she was
not on the defeated side.

Shocky got up and danced with pleasure.

But one suffocating look from the aqueous eyes of Mirandy destroyed the
last spark of Ralph's pleasure in his triumph, and sent that awful
below-zero feeling all through him.

"He's powerful smart, is the master," said old Jack to Mr. Pete Jones.
"He'll beat the whole kit and tuck of 'em afore he's through. I know'd
he was smart. That's the reason I tuck him," proceeded Mr. Means.

"Yaas, but he don't lick enough. Not nigh," answered Pete Jones. "No
lickin', no larnin'," says I.

It was now not so hard. The other spellers on the opposite side went
down quickly under the hard words which the Squire gave out. The master
had mowed down all but a few, his opponents had given up the battle, and
all had lost their keen interest in a contest to which there could be
but one conclusion, for there were only the poor spellers left. But
Ralph Hartsook ran against a stump where he was least expecting it. It
was the Squire's custom, when one of the smaller scholars or poorer
spellers rose to spell against the master, to give out eight or ten easy
words, that they might have some breathing-spell before being
slaughtered, and then to give a poser or two which soon settled them. He
let them run a little, as a cat does a doomed mouse. There was now but
one person left on the opposite side, and, as she rose in her blue
calico dress, Ralph recognized Hannah, the bound girl at old Jack
Means's. She had not attended school in the district, and had never
spelled in spelling-school before, and was chosen last as an uncertain
quantity. The Squire began with easy words of two syllables, from that
page of Webster, so well known to all who ever thumbed it, as "baker,"
from the word that stands at the top of the page. She spelled these
words in an absent and uninterested manner. As everybody knew that she
would have to go down as soon as this preliminary skirmishing was over,
ev