“And Con Bonner won’t vote for any one but Maggie Gilmartin,” added Jim.

“And,” supplied Newton, “Haakon Peterson says he’ll stick to Herman Paulson until the Hot Springs freeze over.”

“And there you are,” said Jim. “You tell your father for me that I think he’s a mere 21 mule—and that the whole district thinks the same.”

21

“All right,” said Newt. “I’ll tell him that while I’m working him to vote for you.”

Jim smiled grimly. Such a position might have been his years ago, if he could have left his mother or earned enough in it to keep both alive. He had remained a peasant because the American rural teacher is placed economically lower than the peasant. He gave Newton’s chatter no consideration. But when, in the afternoon, he hitched his team with others to the big road grader, and the gang became concentrated within talking distance, he found that the project of heckling and chaffing him about his eminent fitness for a scholastic position was to be the real entertainment of the occasion.

“Jim’s the candidate to bust the deadlock,” said Columbus Brown, with a wink. “Just like Garfield in that Republican convention he was nominated in—eh, Con?”

“Con” was Cornelius Bonner, an Irishman, one of the deadlocked school board, and the 22 captain of the road grader. He winked back at the pathmaster.

22

“Jim’s the gray-eyed man o’ destiny,” he replied, “if he can get two votes in that board.”

“You’d vote for me, wouldn’t you, Con?” asked Jim.

“I’ll try annything wance,” replied Bonner.

“Try voting with Ezra Bronson once, for Prue Foster,” suggested Jim. “She’s done good work here.”

“Opinions differ,” said Bonner, “an’ when you try annything just for wance, it shouldn’t be an irrevocable shtip, me bye.”

“You’re a reasonable board of public servants,” said Jim ironically. “I’d like to tell the whole board what I think of them.”

“Come down to-night,” said Bonner jeeringly. “We’re going to have a board meeting at the schoolhouse and ballot a few 

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