I was plodding home from Mary’s.  She had hummed me out at last, and I had tucked Tim’s letter in my pocket and hobbled back to the village.  The light in the store had drawn me aside and I stopped a moment just to look in.  The store is always a fascinating place.  There is always something doing there, and I opened the door a crack to hear what was under discussion.  Catching the same refrain that troubled Elmer Spiker, I entered.

“What of it?” I demanded, facing the company.  “I don’t believe there is a man here who ever thrashed the teacher.”

Theophilus Jones raised himself from the counter on which he was leaning, and waved a lighted candle above his head.

“Here comes the teacher—­make way for the teacher!”

Josiah Nummler pounded the floor with his long pole.

“See the conquerin’ hero comes,” he cried.  “A place for him—­a place for him!” And with the point of his stick he drove the six men on the bench so close together as to give me an excellent seat.

“Thrice welcome, noble he-ro, as Perry Thomas says!” shouted Aaron Kallaberger, thrusting his hand into his bosom in excellent imitation of the orator.

“He’s lookin’ pretty spry yet, ain’t he, boys?” said Isaac Bolum.  He stood before me, leaning over till his hands clasped his knees, and peered into my face, smiling.  “The teacher ain’t changed a bit.”

“Thank you for the reception,” said I.  “But explain.  What’s this all about?”

Elmer Spiker folded the county paper and came around to our side of the stove.  There he struck his favorite attitude, which was always made most effective by the endless operation of putting his spectacles in their case—­pulling them out—­waving them—­ad infinitum.  For in our valley spectacles are the sceptre of the sovereign intellect.

“They was talkin’ about lickin’ the teacher,” Elmer said, “and sech talkin’ I never heard.  It was the nonsensicalest yet.  The way them boys was tellin’ about the teachers they had knowed made me feel for your life when I seen you come in.  I thought they’d fall on you like so many wolves.”

“Now see here, Elmer Spiker,” shouted Henry Holmes, “that’s an injestice.  I never said I’d licked the teacher when I was a boy.  I only said I’d tried it.”

“You give me to understand that the teacher was dead now,” returned Elmer severely.

“He is,” cried Henry.

“And you claim you done it.”

“I done it,” shouted Mr. Holmes, pounding the floor with his cane.  “I done it!  You think I’m a murderer?  Why, old Gilbert Spoonholler was ninety-seven year old when he went away.  He was only forty when him and me had it out.”

“That’s different,” said Elmer calmly.  “I understood from your original account that he died in battle.”

“I tho’t so too, Henery,” put in Isaac Bolum.  “You misled me, complete.  ‘Here,’ says I, ’at last I have met a man who has licked the teacher.’  And all the time you was tellin’ about it, we was admirin’ you—­Joe Nummler and me—­and now we finds Gil Spoonholler lived fifty-seven year after that terrible struggle.”