“Just what do you mean by ’cunjer’?” asked Hamilton, knowing that it would be useless to argue the conditions of a modern city with a boy who had never seen one.

“Bein’ able to put a cunjer on, so’s the one yo’ cunjer has got to do anythin’ yo’ want.”

“Sort of hypnotism business,” commented the older boy.

“Dunno’ what yo’ call it in the city.  Up hyeh in the mount’ns we call it cunjer, an’ thar’s some slick ones hyeh, too.”

“But how did the teacher get mixed up in it?” queried Hamilton.  “It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you’d expect to find a schoolmaster doing.”

“He wasn’t doin’ it, it was again’ him,” the mountain boy explained.  “The folks hyeh suspicioned as he was tippin’ o’ the revenoo men.”

“Who did?  Moonshiners?”

“Easy on that word, Hamilton,” suddenly broke in the old Kentuckian, who had overheard part of the conversation, “thar’s plenty up hyeh that don’ like it.”

“All right, Uncle Eli, I’ll remember,” the boy answered; then, turning to his companion, he continued “You were saying that some of the people in the mountains thought the schoolmaster was giving information to the revenue men.”

“Some said he was.  I don’ believe it myself, an’ most of us boys didn’ believe it, but then the teacheh was allers mighty good to us.”

“Did the revenue officers come up here!”

The mountain lad nodded his head.

“Often,” he said, “an’ when they come to the stills they seemed to know ev’rythin’ an’ ev’rybody.  An’ then some one tol’ that it could be proved on the teacheh.  It never was, but thar was a plenty o’ people who believed the story.  I didn’t, but then the teacheh was allers good to me.”

“But what did the revenue men have to do with the ’cunjering’?” asked Hamilton, desiring to keep his informant to the point.

“They didn’t, it was the men on the Ridge.”

“Do you know how it happened?”

“I know all about it,” the lad answered, with a slightly less listless air, “for I was in school that mornin’.  For a week or more we boys had seen ol’ Blacky Baldwin sort o’ snoopin’ aroun’ near the school, but as we allers crossed our fingers an’ said nothin’ so long as he was in hearin’, we weren’t afraid.”

“What did you do that for?”

The younger boy looked at the city-bred lad with an evident pity for his ignorance.

[Illustration:  Moonshining.  Revenue officers hot on the trail. (Brown Bros.)]

[Illustration:  Moonshining.  Revenue officers hot on the trail; the fire is burning, the still working, and the moonshiner’s coat hangs on a tree. (Brown Bros.)]

“So’s he couldn’t cunjer us, O’ course,” he said.  “Don’ yo’ even know that?  Ol’ Blacky Baldwin is a first-class cunjer, an’ any one o’ them can cunjer you with the words he hears yo’ sayin’.”

“But if this ‘cunjer-fellow’ was hanging around the school,” suggested Hamilton, “why didn’t you tell the master?”