ood beside him.
But the priest did not care for that.

He only said it for the sake of his reputation, so that certain
doubters might see that he was a learned gentleman.

When folks talked about it in Eynhofen and told each other that
Fottner's Matt could already talk Latin like a Roman, no one rejoiced
more intensely than the Bridge Farmer.

That is comprehensible. For he had speculated in the scholarship of the
lad, and watched him with rapt attention, as he would anything else
that he had put money into.

So he was glad on general grounds, and especially so when Matt came
home after the third year with glasses on his nose and an actually
priestly look.

This tickled him to death, and he asked the teacher whether, in view of
this circumstance, and inasmuch as Matt knew Latin, after all--more
than was needed to read mass--whether it mightn't be possible to
shorten the time.

When the teacher told him that such exceptions could not be made, he
found it intelligible; but when the schoolmaster tried to explain the
reason, saying that a priest didn't merely have to know the reading of
the mass by heart, but must know even more, the Bridge Farmer shook his
head and laughed a bit. He wasn't such a fool as to swallow that. Why
did anybody have to learn more'n what he needed? Hey?

No, this is the way it was: them perfessers in Freising wanted to keep
Matt a good long while, because they made money on him.

In this belief he was very much strengthened when Matthew Fottner
flunked the fourth year in the Latin school. 'Count o' Greek. Because
he couldn't learn Greek.

That made it as clear as day, for now the Bridge Farmer asked anybody,
what did a priest have to know Greek for, when services and mass were
celebrated in Latin?

They must be slick fellows, those gentlemen in Freising, reg'lar
pickpockets.

He was all-fired mad at them, for he couldn't put any blame on the
Fottner boy.

Matt told him that all he'd ever thought and known was that he'd simply
have to study what the priest in Eynhofen knew. But he'd never heard
him say a word of Greek all his life long, and so he hadn't been
prepared for anything like that.

To this no objection could be made; on Matt's part the deal was
straight and O. K. The rascality was on the part of the others, off
there in Freising. The Bridge Farmer went to the priest and made
complaint.

But thieves stand by each other, and the farmer gets done every time.
The priest la