What the mail-carrier said to me the first day, when the two old men was screechin’ inside their tent, was that they were children and fools. But he was an Injun and did not have indulgent feelings. I saw more of ’em and didn’t mind ’em. I fell into a job at the Forks. Mr. Edmund wanted somebody else in the store, and I could write a plain hand and add figures fairly correct. He was kind of mad about the school-house, havin’ the interests of the valley at heart, and he used to watch the days gettin’ shorter. Mr. Edmund had everything at heart--too much at heart--other folks’ troubles as well as his own. He would lecture me about them in his deep-down voice. School wouldn’t do in a tent after snow came, and he saw that this would come down to havin’ school in his own cabin if the children was to get any teachin’ at all. He was the only one that didn’t leave ’em alone about their coal-mine. Offered to buy it off ’em wunst, and they screeched for ten minutes. Threatened to write to Washington and have him removed for takin’ advantage of his office. “Why, you don’t know where Washington is,” says he, with his voice down in the cellar. “Washington, D.C.?” screeches Kultus Jake. “I don’t know? I been there!” “Washington, D.C.,” repeats Edmund slow, like Fate a-comin’. “You don’t know where it is.” That was Edmund all over. His way o’ jokin’. “It’s in Maryland,” says Frisco Baldy. “Virginia, y’u singed porcupine!” yells Kultus Jake. “Don’t I tell y’u I been there?” And I seen they both meant it. And I seen this really grieved Edmund instead of pleasin’ him. He took it to heart. Well, sir, I just went acrost the store and lay down on the flour-sacks. Kicked up my heels. Guess I made more noise than the old men did. After a minute I lifted up to see what Edmund was doin’, and he’d pushed his spectacles up high on his forehead and was lookin’ at the two scrappin’ about Washington, D.C., out of his awful solemn eyes; so I laid down again flat. If Edmund had talked I couldn’t have heard him, but as a matter of fact he just let ’em go it alone; and they, like they pretty much always done, got switched off on to somethin’ else--this time it was the traps. There was some number fours hanging there, and they both happened to agree it was number fours they would take when they started into the mountains to trap for the winter. So traps made ’em forget about Washington, D.C., and _it_ had made ’em forget about exposin’ Edmund, which had made ’em forget the coal-mine and the school-house, and so they departed entirely peaceful out of the store and over the Thowmet to their tent, which they had moved up to the Forks. Then I looks up from the sacks again. There stands Edmund behind his desk, same as ever, spectacles away up on his forehead, only now his solemn eyes was fixed on me. And I looks at him, not knowin’ what on earth he’s goin’ to say or whether he’s mad or ain’t mad--for y’u couldn’t often tell from his face. For a young man--and he