It is likely that they would have begun his schooling at once but when
they came out into the store and saw the big Vermonter standing in the
candlelight their laughter ceased for a moment. Bill was among them with
a well filled bottle in his hand.

He and the others got into a wagon which had been waiting at the door and
drove away with a wild Indian whoop from the lips of one of the young
men.

Samson sat down in the candlelight and Abe in a moment arrived.

"I'm getting awful sick o' this business," said Abe.

"I kind o' guess you don't like the whisky part of it," Samson remarked,
as he felt a piece of cloth.

"I hate it," Abe went on. "It don't seem respectable any longer."

"Back in Vermont we don't like the whisky business."

"You're right, it breeds deviltry and disorder. In my youth I was
surrounded by whisky. Everybody drank it. A bottle or a jug of liquor was
thought to be as legitimate a piece of merchandise as a pound of tea or a
yard of calico. That's the way I've always thought of it. But lately I've
begun to get the Yankee notion about whisky. When it gets into bad
company it can raise the devil."

Soon after nine o'clock Abe drew a mattress filled with corn husks from
under the counter, cleared away the bolts of cloth and laid it where they
had been and covered it with a blanket.