one or two other modest sources of still more modest income. But
Radville folks are poor, many of them, many who are very dear to me for
old sake's sake. There's Sam Graham.... Though I wouldn't have you
understand that as a community we are not moderately prosperous and
contented, comfortable if not energetic and advanced. This is not a
pushing town: it has never known a boom. That I'm sure will some day
come, but I hope not in my time. I have faith in the mountains that
fold us roundabout; they are rich with the possibilities of coal and
iron, and year by year are being more and more widely opened up and
developed; year by year the ranks of flaming, reeking coke ovens push
farther on beside the railway that penetrates our valley. But as yet
their smoke does not foul our skies, nor does their refuse pollute our
river, nor their soot tarnish our vegetation. And as I say, I hope this
is not to be while I live, though sometimes I have fears: Blinky
Lockwood made a fortune selling the coal that was discovered beneath
his father's old farm over Westerly way, and ever since that there's
been more or less quiet prospecting going on in our vicinity. I shall
be sorry to see the day when Radville is other than as it is: the
quiet, peaceful, sleepy little town, nestling in the bosom of the
hills, clean, sweet and wholesome....

But this is rambling far from the momentous twenty-first of June, my
day of triumph.

I shall try to set down connectedly and coherently the events which
culminated in the humbling of Will Bigelow to the dust.

To begin with, we were early startled by the rumour that Hiram Nutt,
theretofore deemed unconquerable, had been disastrously defeated at
checkers in Willoughby's grocery--and that by Watty the tailor, of all