drove eleven railroad spikes through his stomach and cut off his
scalp, and it never hurt him a bit. He said he got away by the
daughter of the chief sneaking him out of the wigwam and lending him a
horse. Bill says she was in love with him; and when I asked him to let
me see the holes where they drove in the spikes, he said he daresn't
take off his clothes or he'd bleed to death. He said his own father
didn't know it, because Bill was afraid it might worry the old man.

"And Bill tole me they wasn't going to get him to go to Sunday-school.
He says his father has a brass idol that he keeps in the garret, and
Bill says he's made up his mind to be a pagan, and to begin to go
naked, and carry a tomahawk and a bow and arrow, as soon as the warm
weather comes. And to prove it to me, he says his father has this town
all underlaid with nitro-glycerine, and as soon as he gets ready he's
going to blow the old thing out, and bust her up, let her rip, and
demolish her. He said so down at the dam, and tole me not to tell
anybody, but I thought they'd be no harm in mentioning it to you.

"And now I believe I must be going. I hear Bill a-whistling. Maybe
he's got something else to tell me."

The Smith boy will be profitable to the youth of the community.

* * * * *

Barnes, the pedagogue, is a worthy man who has seen trouble. Precisely
what was the nature of the afflictions which had filled his face with
furrows and given him the air of one who has been overburdened with
sorrows was not revealed until Mr. Keyser told the story one evening
at the grocery-store. Whether his narrative is strictly true or not