“It’s a problem no scholar ever solved in the history of this walley, anyway,” declared Elmer Spiker.

“It ain’t on the records,” said Kallaberger.

“There are le-gends,” Isaac Bolum said.  He pointed at Henry Holmes with his thumb.  “Sech as his.”

“Yes,” said Josiah Nummler, “we have sech le-gends, comin’ mostly from the Indians and Henery Holmes.  But there’s one I got from my pap when I was a boy, and I allus thought it one of the most be-yutiful fairy stories I ever heard—­of course exceptin’ them in the Bible.  It was about Six Stars school, here, and the boy’s name was Ernest, and the teacher’s Leander.  It was told to my pap by his pap, so you can see that as a le-gend it was older than them of Henery Holmes.”

“It certainly sounds more interestin’,” exclaimed Isaac Bolum.

Old Mr. Holmes started to protest, but Aaron Kallaberger quieted him with an offering of tobacco.  By the time his pipe was going, Josiah was well into his story.

“Of all the teachers that ever tot in Six Stars this here Leander was the most fe-rocious.  He was six foot two inches tall in his stockin’s, and weighed no more than one hundred and thirty pound, stripped, but he was wiry.  His arms was like long bands of iron.  His legs was like hickory saplin’s, and when he wasn’t usin’ them he allus kept them wound round the chair, so as to unspring ’em at a moment’s notice and send himself flyin’ at the darin’ scholar.  His face was white and all hung with hanks of black hair; his eyes was one minute like still intellectual pools and the next like burnin’ coals of fire—­that was my pap’s way of puttin’ it.  Ernest was just his opposite.  He was a chunky boy with white hair and pale eyes.  He was a nice boy when let alone, but in the whole fifteen years of his life he’d never had no call to bound Kansas or tell the capital of Californy outside of school hours, so he regarded Leander with a fierce and childlike hatred.  But Ernest had a noble streak in him, too.  For himself he would ‘a’ suffered in silence.  It was the constant oppression of the helpless little ones that saddened him.  It was maddenin’ to have to sit silent every day while tiny girls, no older than ten, was being hounded from one end of the g’ography to the other.  He seen small boys, shavers under eight, scratchin’ holes in their heads with slate-pencils, tryin’ to make out why two and two was four; he seen girls, be-yutiful young girls of his own age, drove almost to distraction by black-boards full of diagrams from the grammar-book.  And allus before him, the inspirin’ note of the whole systematic system of torturin’ the young, was the rod; broodin’ over it all, like a black cloud, was Leander’s repytation, was the memory of the boys as had gone before.  For years Ernest bore all this.  Then come a time when he was called to a position of responsibility in the school.  One after another, the biggest boys had fallen.  A few had gradyeated.