m.

"And," supplied Newton, "Haakon Peterson says he'll stick to Herman
Paulson until the Hot Springs freeze over."

"And there you are," said Jim. "You tell your father for me that I think
he's a mere mule--and that the whole district thinks the same."

"All right," said Newt. "I'll tell him that while I'm working him to vote
for you."

Jim smiled grimly. Such a position might have been his years ago, if he
could have left his mother or earned enough in it to keep both alive. He
had remained a peasant because the American rural teacher is placed
economically lower than the peasant. He gave Newton's chatter no
consideration. But when, in the afternoon, he hitched his team with others
to the big road grader, and the gang became concentrated within talking
distance, he found that the project of heckling and chaffing him about his
eminent fitness for a scholastic position was to be the real entertainment
of the occasion.

"Jim's the candidate to bust the deadlock," said Columbus Brown, with a
wink. "Just like Garfield in that Republican convention he was nominated
in--eh, Con?"

"Con" was Cornelius Bonner, an Irishman, one of the deadlocked school
board, and the captain of the road grader. He winked back at the
pathmaster.

"Jim's the gray-eyed man o' destiny," he replied, "if he can get two votes
in that board."

"You'd vote for me, wouldn't you, Con?" asked Jim.

"I'll try annything wance," replied Bonner.

"Try voting with Ezra Bronson once, for Prue Foster," suggested Jim.
"She's done good work here."

"Opinions differ," said Bonner, "an' when you try annything just for
wance, it shouldn't be an irrevocable shtip, me bye."

"You're a reasonable board of public servants," said Jim ironically. "I'd
like to tell the whole board what I think of them."

"Come down to-night," said Bonner jeeringly. "We're going to have a board
meeting at the schoolhouse and ballot a few more times. Come down, and be
the Garfield of the convintion. We've lacked brains on the board, that's
clear. They ain't a man on the board that iver studied algebra, 'r that
knows more about farmin' than their impl'yers. Come down to the
schoolhouse, and we'll have a field-hand addriss the school board--and
begosh, I'll move yer illiction mesilf! Come, now, Jimmy, me bye, be game.
It'll vary the program, anny-how."

The entire gang grinned. Jim flushed, and then reconquered his calmness of
spirit.

"All right, Con," said he. "I'll come an