was quite a festival. Jim Irwin was the least conspicuous person in the
gathering, but the colonel, who was a seasoned politician, observed that
the farm-hand had become a fisher of men, and was angling for the souls of
these boys, and their interest in the school. Jim was careful not to flush
the covey, but every boy received from the next winter's teacher some
confidential hint as to plans, and some suggestion that Jim was relying on
the aid and comfort of that particular boy. Newt Bronson, especially, was
leaned on as a strong staff and a very present help in time of trouble. As
for Raymond Simms, it was clearly best to leave him alone. All this talk
of corn selection and related things was new to him, and he drank it in
thirstily. He had an inestimable advantage over Newt in that he was
starved, while Newt was surfeited with "advantages" for which he had no
use.

"Jennie," said Colonel Woodruff, after the party had broken up, "I'm
losing the best hand I ever had, and I've been sorry."

"I'm glad he's leaving you," said Jennie. "He ought to do something except
work in the field for wages."

"I've had no idea he could make good as a teacher--and what is there in it
if he does?"

"What has he lost if he doesn't?" rejoined Jennie. "And why can't he make
good?"

"The school board's against him, for one thing," replied the colonel.
"They'll fire him if they get a chance. They're the laughing-stock of the
country for hiring him by mistake, and they're irritated. But after seeing
him perform to-night, I wonder if he can't make good."

"If he could _feel_ like anything but an underling he'd succeed," said
Jennie.

"That's his heredity," stated the colonel, whose live-stock operations
were based on heredity. "Jim's a scrub, I suppose; but he acts as if he
might turn out to be a Brown Mouse."

"What do you mean, pa," scoffed Jennie--"a Brown Mouse!"

"A fellow in Edinburgh," said the colonel, "crossed the Japanese waltzing
mouse with the common white mouse. Jim's pedling father was a waltzing
mouse, no good except to jump from one spot to another for no good reason.
Jim's mother is an albino of a woman, with all the color washed out in one
way or another. Jim ought to be a mongrel, and I've always considered him
one. But the Edinburgh fellow every once in a while got out of his
variously-colored, waltzing and albino hybrids, a brown mouse. It wasn't a
common house mouse, either, but a wild mouse unlike any he had eve