ny one"--looking at Newton--"about the election. It's none of the
business of the women an' boys."

Newton took this reproof in an unexpectedly submissive spirit. In fact, he
exhibited his very best side to the family that morning, like one going on
a long journey, or about to be married off, or engaged in some deep dark
plot.

"I s'pose you're off trampin' the slews at the sight of a flock of ducks
four miles off as usual?" stated Mr. Bronson challengingly.

"I thought," said Newton, "that I'd get a lot of raisin bait ready for the
pocket-gophers in the lower meadow. They'll be throwing up their mounds by
the first of April."

"Not them," said Mr. Bronson, somewhat mollified, "not before May. Where'd
you get the raisin idee?"

"We learned it in school," answered Newton. "Jim had me study a bulletin
on the control and eradication of pocket-gophers. You use raisins with
strychnine in 'em--and it tells how."

"Some fool notion, I s'pose," said Mr. Bronson, rising. "But go ahead if
you're careful about handlin' the strychnine."

Newton spent the time from twelve-thirty to half after two in watching the
clock; and twenty minutes to three found him seated in the woodshed with a
pen-knife in his hand, a small vial of strychnine crystals on a stand
before him, a saucer of raisins at his right hand, and one exactly like
it, partially filled with gopher bait--by which is meant raisins under the
skin of each of which a minute crystal of strychnine had been inserted on
the point of the knife. Newton was apparently happy and was whistling _The
Glow-Worm_. It was a lovely scene if one can forget the gopher's point of
view.

At three-thirty, Newton went into the house and lay down on the horsehair
sofa, saying to his mother that he felt kind o' funny and thought he'd lie
down a while. At three-forty he heard his father's voice in the kitchen
and knew that his sire was preparing to start for the scene of battle
between Colonel Woodruff and Con Bonner, on the result of which hinged the
future of Jim Irwin and the Woodruff school.

A groan issued from Newton's lips--a gruesome groan as of the painful
death of a person very sensitive to physical suffering. But his father's
voice from the kitchen door betrayed no agitation. He was scolding the
horses as they stood tied to the hitching-post, in tones that showed no
knowledge of his son's distressed moans.

"What's the matter?"

It was Newton's little sister who asked the quest